Final Evaluation!

I have learnt a lot during the process of creating this animation and feel like I have stepped out of my comfort zone since I haven't ever created an animation of this length that wasn't all drawn by hand. Over all I'm quite happy with it, however I do think that the Dragon is quite 2 dimensional which is something my tutor and I did discuss but by that point it would have taken too long to go back and redo the work, so next time I'll put more thought into the angling of the characters. The Man however, I was happier with because he wasn't completely side on so he did have some roundness to him. I had tried going with the style of having the background hand drawn with coloured pencil and having the characters coloured digitally which I thought would look good, I did like the end result, but I think the background could have done with more detail as the characters seemed to stand out a bit too much from the surrounding environment. Since there was so much to colour digitally it required a lot of separate layers which did make the process quicker. However, there are a few frames where some of the layerings were not quite right, so there are some moments where the colouring doesn't look very consistent, but unfortunately I didn't get the chance to go back and alter this. I did however go back and alter the original audio so it would sound more appealing and not pull too much attention away from the animation and I think this was a big improvement.

Putting this animation together has felt really challenging because I have been trying to push past my little fear of using new software. Im really happy with the story I have produced and it is actually really out of the ordinary for me because I am used to creating characters of a more creepy nature, so it was quite refreshing to create something a bit less terrifying! If I was to go back and produce this animation again with a different technique, I would consider hand drawn or stop-motion. This is because I know hand drawn animation comes to me more naturally and I feel stop motion is more suited to me. However I have really this brief because now I feel like the next time I create an animation in the same way, it will be better. My favourite part of this animation that I think I have done well, is the fire. When the dragon blows fire, I think it looks effective as it meets the campfire. This is something that has been pointed out by other people, so I'm pleased. Even though I will end up producing work that is much better, I'm feeling pleased with it because this technique hasn't come to me very naturally, it has left me feeling keen to get better at it and to not make the same mistakes.