Personal reflection on final animation

Looking back on this project and the final outcome, I found there were both strengths and things to improve on. I am proud of the visuals and the aesthetics that we were able to achieve, as the colour palette is a large strength in the film, which I was able to have a major part in deciding in. I was also pleased with the finished set me and my peers were able to create, and especially liked the different use of textures, which is something I wanted to aim for when researching other stop-motion films. The character designs were also strong, and fit in with this world that we had created for them. The fact that we had multiple faces for the characters meant we could be expressive with their emotions, and is something that paid off in the final animation - I felt that another strong point of the film is the characterisation we could achieve with both the husband and wife, as we were able to make the way we animated them match with their personalities. I also enjoyed the lighting of the different shots, with the external lighting from the garden contrasting the light inside, particularly in the first shot where the light inside the house is meant to be off. The use of sound was also successful in our film, as we were able to convey different actions just through sound instead of visually showing everything, for example, when the husband arrives home, we only see the wife’s reaction. The music also fit well with the tone of the film, and liked how it seemed to be in the background but was actually coming from the radio within the scene.

When reviewing the production process of the animation, I think there could have been some things to improve one. One was a lack of planning in my opinion, as there were some shots that I felt were missing - for example, a close-up of the lipstick mark on the husband’s collar -, and could have been planned out better. We did create an animatic to gain a sense of timings and editing, but due to different problems with props or the camera, we had to change some things. I believe this led to the final edited version being a little confusing for some audiences, as there wasn’t enough time at the end/ or the right shots to produce a satisfying conclusion. Due to a lack of time management, one person in the team was left with all the editing, which meant that we couldn’t all communicate and give feedback on how it was edited. I also think that as we were able to animate our characters so expressively, we didn’t need any subtitles in the film, apart from possibly the line “don’t open that can of worms”, as the facial expressions and voices conveyed what was going on; our peers also noted this fact, as the subtitles didn’t add much to the overall animation.

Also to do with planning, I think we could’ve had more of a variation in camera angles, as a lot of the film was shot from the front, and felt the same tone throughout. I think that the first test shot showing the side view of the husband and the set would have been nice to include somewhere. This also would have meant that more of the set could have been shown, as from the front angle, only a small portion of the set could actually be seen, and I think we could have utilised the set more to its full potential - even small shots focusing on certain parts of the set to convey something about the relationship between the characters could have worked. However, due to the problems we had with the camera that limited our movement, it was difficult to move the set around instead to gain different angles. I think we also could have built the set with more consideration of where the camera was going to be, and what shots we were going to need, as our set was quite long, which meant it was difficult to get the close-ups that we wanted from that angle with the camera lens and set up we had.

Another problem we encountered was the lack of stability with the armatures, as both of them broke at some point during the production, meaning that properly animating with them was difficult. Stronger or more layers of wire would have been sufficient to balance with the clay heads, and wouldn’t have snapped so easily.

Stop-motion project [PRODUCTION]

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