On Tuesday we got together as a class to watch through the animations everyone had produced for the brief, so we could give and receive feedback. I'm actually very shocked with how well others responded to my animation, I even got a few chuckles out of my audience which felt great.
There weren't many suggested improvements and I think people generally thought I'd done a good job animating digitally for the first time. The main suggestion was to reconsider my audio, as the sounds I had recorded were too quiet. I can easily address this by simply adjusting the audio levels on Premiere.
Another suggestion regarding audio was to add a subtle background track as there is a lot of silence between sound effects. Some of the audience seemed to like the crackle that the lighter made at the beginning of the animation, and one suggestion was to have that play every so often as the backing track. I think this is a nice idea, as I think it will compliment the flames nicely as well as the rest of the animation in comparison to a song for example. This will also be much easier for me to do, as I wouldn't know what sort of song or music would best accompany the animation, and even if I did I wouldn't know how to go about collecting the music, where as I can easily record my own sounds.
A good majority of the audience seemed to agree that I had animated the jump very well as well as the way I had introduced new characters. They also liked the subtly of the interactions between these characters, which was great. The only flaw concerning the animated movements that was pointed out was when the character is breathing in and out. It was recommended that I make her move up and down a bit more, as it seems that her chest just inflates and deflates. I appreciated the feedback, but I wasn't looking to exaggerate the action that much, as I didn't want her to take a deep breath. To me, it makes more sense if she doesn't as the tougher male character doesn't extinguish straight away. I think it would have been nice to see what she would have looked like more exaggerated as this may have increased the girl's appeal, but it's not necessarily the style I was going for with this character. Then again she is a bit static, so it might be worth just giving her a look over, to see if I can make the shoulders move just a touch more when she blows out the candles.
The final consideration was the lighting in the final "scene". It was pointed out that the lights are usually off when a birthday cake is presented, so it might be a nice idea to make the room a bit darker to make the scene more realistic, or at least give the candles a glow, to indicate that they are lit and are the only light source in the room. This didn't even cross my mind when I was creating my animation and I can't believe it is something I didn't pick up on myself. I would like to address this as I think it would enhance my animation just that bit more, and I don't think it will be a greatly time-consuming task.
Overall, I think the critique went really well, and I'm very happy that the animation got such great feedback. I am going to look into my suggested improvements to see if I can actually improve on the areas that were discussed.
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