Applied Animation: Final Critique

Today was the day of our final critique, and even though the rest of the class seems to be stressing out beyond belief, I was actually feeling okay with the progress me and my group had made. Oscar had slotted in our animated scenes into our animatic to show to the rest of the class for feedback, and the general response was that they liked where we were heading with our animation. Sara pointed out that the shot framing of the 'stamp scene' and the 'posting scene' involving the baby might be too similar, and that it might be a good idea to change this slightly so the cut isn't too jarring. However there was no background on either of the scenes so it was hard to get a sense of the camera angle, and when I tested the scenes previously with the backgrounds in place, I personally didn't have an issue with how the scenes cut. I think if this was something we were wanting to change it would have to be a consideration for another time, as there isn't enough time now to re-draw a scene, as deadline is approaching and we still have post-production to do. Other than this we didn't receive any other comments on how we could improve, so we are taking this as a sign to continue to plodding on with production.

Animatic With Slotted Footage

When we got together after the crit to discuss what our next line of action was, we realised that a lot of footage had been missed out from the animatic clip we showed as our work was not visible to Oscar on our shared Google Drive folder when he came to put the video together. We soon discovered that we don't have much left to do at all, and we think we could easily be finished by the end of the week. All we have to do is re-record sound, colour the odd scene, put them all together and add titles. This has made me feel much better about my current position with my work, as I feel like I can relax a bit more now, knowing that my workload isn't as big as what I thought it was. 

Animated Background Test

As I was able to finish all my animating within good time, this meant I could revisit some of the backgrounds. It was suggested before that I make the baby move as the stamp is being placed on him, but I left this until the end as it wasn't particularly a necessity. Martin suggested to me in the crit that I could help enhance the comical factor of this story by having the baby looking shocked as the stamp is being placed on him. I thought this was a good idea, but didn't just want to do this as I thought it would be inconsistent with the rest of the scene. Instead, I did animate the baby crying and squirming, but had him stop doing so once the stamp was placed to make it look like he was shocked.

I'm glad that I was able to find the time to revisit this scene as I think the addition of an animated background is a great improvement. I am unsure whether the baby pauses for too long at the beginning though, so I shall ask Wing and Oscar about their opinions to see whether I need to add in more frames at the start. Besides from this, I am now finished with drawing, and can now help out with post-production and any other tweaks that need to be carried out.