Monday 12 May 2014

Evaluation

What is your work about?

My animation is about anti-bullying. I decided to focus on the growth of bullying and how it can develop and change the victims life. I wanted to show how bullying can affect people and change their perspectives of life. I wanted to create an emotional animation which makes people stop and think about the effects of bullying and how in extreme cases it can be fatal. Many people around me and myself have been bullied so I feel very passionate about this subject and wanted to show it by combining their stories into one making it more realistic. The animation displays a persons account of bullying and the drawings demonstrate their feelings and what was happening at the time. I used minimal colours to make it more raw and emotional and allow the words to speak for themselves. Coupled with the child-like drawings to communicate how bullying can affect many people. Also I use many images of the female speaker however she always looks different to show how bullying can affect many different people and although this is one person telling their story they are speaking the emotion thousands of young people feel everyday.

How did you make it and what media did you use?

I made the animation by hand-drawing/tracing images I found online which linked to the idea in each scene. I then scanned these into the computer and drew over them in Photoshop to create my animation. I added a vocal track which I recorded in an open room so there was a little bit of echo and some background noise but not too much to stray attention. I made each individual scene in Photoshop and then complied them all together in Premier to create the final animation. 

How did you develop your main idea? How did it change as your progressed? Which artists influenced you?

My initial idea developed from the theme of Growth and Evolution was emotional photography based around the ideas of; bullying, mental health and eating disorders. From this I began to look at influential artists, I found the work of Phillip Toledano and Sophie Calle very interesting and the use of subdued lighting makes the piece stand out more and more emotional. I then began developing a line of enquiry and looked at the 3 ideas of bullying, mental illness and eating disorders. From mood boards and brainstorms I decided to start focusing more on the idea of mental illness and bullying as I found both these ideas could interlink. Benoit Pallie I found t be very inspirational, her up close photography of children who had experienced bullying was very emotional through the simplicity of it. I began playing around with the same ideas as her work and started to re-create my own version of her work. Thats when I decided I wanted to follow the line of bullying solely. I began looking at anti-bullying campaigns, photography and animation. To This Day an inspirational animation based around a speech by someone who was bullied was very influential. I went on to create my own version of this animation by using a male speaker and illustrating his words. From this animation I found it was very emotional and could communicate my ideas about anti-bullying well. Therefore, I went forward with this idea, looking at real-life accounts of bullying as well as fictional stories online and eventually developed my own narrative combining all the stories I had found through research. I then created a mock-up in which I experimented with different drawings and colour. From this I found the drawing needed to be consistent and that the role of colours needed to be explored. In the end I created a 1.47 minute animation with a consistent drawing style and that only used the colours black and white. 

What worked and what didn't work?

The most successful part of my work was the structure of the narrative. It clearly tells the story of the emotion the female speaker has gone through during this traumatic time. I feel the drawings turned out well, they were consistent throughout which meant that they added a sense of continuity within my work. The minimalist approach worked well for this theme as the use of colours, I feel, could of overpowered the drawings and the speech. The timings worked better than my mock-up as it meant that the drawings stayed on screen long enough for the audience to take in what was being shown. 
The area I am least happy with is the quality of some of the drawings. Some drawings could of been improved making them of higher quality so they look better. I feel this could of been done if I had more time and had possibly used less images so that the ones I did use were high in quality. 

If you had the opportunity to do it again what would you change?

If I had a chance I would change my initial drawings. I did drawing and then scanned them in to draw over digitally to create my animation. However, I feel it may of been better had I photographed each event then digitally drawn over it. That way I would of had a combination of an animation and photographs to help illustrate the story. However, due to a lack of timings I couldn't do this originally. Also I would have planned more for what to do during the exam so I made sure I had enough time to complete every task to a high standard. That way I wouldn't of rushed making my iPad cover and could of possibly developed that roe to be high quality. 

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