Telling Tales: Interim Crit.

In order to prepare for our presentation for the interim crit, we decided that I should be in charge of putting together the power point, whilst Emma got to work on our animatic, which is exactly what we did. As we had already discussed the timings for each of the scenes in our storyboard, all Emma had to do was refine the images. Whilst Emma was doing this I was scanning in all of our work up to date and forming a presentation that we would be able to present to the class.

Our Animatic

 Our Presentation Slides

I feel the presentation went well, a lot better than some of the presentations I've given before. Maybe it's due to the fact I was stood at the front with someone else, but I'd like to think it's because I've gotten more confident with presenting, but who knows. We were able to assign each other slides to talk about fairly without one of us taking charge and stealing what each other had to say. The only thing that I would like to work on is how quickly I talk when I'm nervous or when I'm excited about the conversation topic. I tend to trip over my words a lot and not think about how I can form sentences as I'm speaking. I would also like to cut down on the amount of times I say "erm" or "like" in my sentences. It's an awful habit I have picked up and I'm trying my best to work on these issues whilst I'm speaking.

But enough about that/me.

Our ideas seemed to be received well and we managed to get a lot of good feedback and ideas for improvement with the main points arising from the setting. There were a lot of suggestions about experimenting with colour in either the background or with some of the objects in the room, just because it feels more eerie/scary than it does friendly, and the addition of a pastel colour might help create the ambience we are looking for. It was also suggested that we look into the furniture we choose to model and feature in the room, as it might be a nice touch to have children's toys scattered around the floor. This would make the scene more realistic and would also give a sense for where the floor is, considering the space at the moment seems infinite.

The next major point was the character design. It was pointed out to us that we need to focus on the scale and proportions of the child and parent before we begin modelling. This was a fair point and was something we had actually already considered, but just wasn't portrayed well in the presentation. I had simply but the designs side by side at similar sizes so the designs could be easily seen by our audience, and was not to reflect size or scale. Having said this, I shall look further into the body proportions of the child and think about maybe making his/her head and eyes larger to more closely represent a child, etc.

All the points raised were valid, and are going to be things that we consider and explore before we move further with our project, in particular our modelling. They shouldn't take too long to sort out so we should be able to start modelling this week (fingers crossed). It was also nice to hear that Mat thinks we are working well as a team, and that we have been able to adapt to each other's styles, especially as we were having a few issues as the project was starting out in terms of communication.