Feeback from my animation

Feedback from my animation

How I would get feedback from my animation

Getting feedback on your own work is just another task for you to perform. You need to get your work in front of other people’s eyes so they can view it and give their opinion. Just finishing your work and hoping someone sees it isn’t good enough, you have to try and try till you get feedback. To start off with, the easiest and simplest thing to do is to put the animation onto YouTube. Millions and millions people visit the site every day to look at new and old videos; this is a perfect place to get feedback. Everyone has their own opinion on YouTube and feels like they’re god’s gift to the world so I expect someone to bring some feedback. But sometimes, people might watch the video but not comment or like the video to give me feedback. I will still leave the ident on YouTube to wait for feedback (if ever I get any) and then I will update my feedback with the comments from YouTube.

Another way is through interactive face to face. This is the quickest method in my opinion which gives you instant feedback instead of messing about with technology. Obviously I can’t just go up to a person and say, ‘what do you think of my animation?’ First of all they haven’t even seen the animation and they can’t just write feedback on a white blank piece of paper. They will need certain questions that you want to know in particularly. This is when it comes to a feedback sheet, which I need to create myself. The feedback sheet needs to have questions about what the animation but also questions about what I want to know for my own personal reasons. I want the questions that I have in my head about the animation to be answered so I will put them on the feedback sheet. But that just doesn’t cut it yet, its missing the final element; I actually have to show the animation to an audience. Now, this isn’t hard to show to audience because being in a media class it’s quite easy to present it to everyone, and get feedback immediately. So this way is very easy.

The final way I could get feedback is pushing it in my opinion. Don’t get me wrong, it’s possible, but I just don’t myself getting feedback at all through this method. Now, I thought of sending my animation to a few companies and places which might want to see it. I know straight up that my animation is nothing special, but I think that’s what makes it special. So, I thought of sending it to companies like Sky to see if I get any feedback. I know this is not likely to happen, but it is still worth a complete try. Other places were channels like Channel 4 (I thought of Channel 4 straight away because they are always looking for new original ideas which are like nothing else) and MTV (which is another where they are always looking for new talent to reach out to). I plan to do this method by emailing all of the companies through their appropriate email addresses but I don’t expect any feedback anytime soon.

Feedback

I got my feedback back, and my first impression was nothing like I expected. When I finished my animation I was quite proud of it. It was simple yet explained everything that happens with a colourful bang. But once, I gave it in I regretted it. I don’t even know why; I think it was because I thought it looked to childish and simple to be taken serious as a genuine. So when I got my feedback I expected the worst straight away. That my animation was meant for a ‘younger audience’ and they didn’t ‘get it’. But no; it was all great feedback.

I first put my animation onto YouTube to get feedback. I didn’t expect any feedback but I did in fact, I got feedback straight away within an hour, just off one person on YouTube though. The user named ‘AllysonKu55’ says “Can you say AWESOME! I can’t believe that your video isn’t getting more vieWs, Ӏ mean come on people! It almost makes me angry that videos this good haven’t gotten the views they deserve.”

I know what you’re thinking; just appalling at putting sentences together but I just read it as it was. Now this is feedback obviously, but it’s not the feedback I was hoping for to be honest. The user didn’t say anything productive that can help me turn this into feedback, he just liked the animation and got angry because I wasn’t generating more views. So very much a pointless exercise, but at least I got feedback.

The next way of getting feedback was through my class. All of my class watched my animation all at the same time and I gave them feedback sheets which I created myself. These are the questions I put on the sheet:

1: Do you think my animation is creative?

If no, what could I have done to make the animation more creative?

2: I wanted to make my animation as simple as possible because I believe big budget idents are pointless. Would you say my animation is simple to understand?

Explain why…

3: I decided to make my ident for Sky Arts, so I chose a different target audience. What age group do you think I am attracting with my ident?

(Boxes of different choices were shown for my class to choice)

Explain why…

On every single feedback sheet that I got back, every one said that they thought my animation was creative, so this was positive feedback straight away. This meant nobody thought it could be more creative which I disagreed with to be honest. Even I thought the animation could have been more creative. Second question again was answered with the same answer as ‘yes’ to being simple to understand. But I added the extra ‘explain why’ to get more feedback. This is how I would get answers from individual people instead of just the same answer on each page; that doesn’t give me any progress for my report. Each person in my class had something different to say but it mostly interpreted to the same thing. The animation was simple to follow and effective in its use, it mainly did what it was trying to achieve; not be big and visually stunning, but simple and linking with the channel that I am working for. This was another positive outcome from the feedback sheet which I was really happy about, mainly because my class had got what I was trying to achieve with animation. The final question was where it got mixed and I the answers became interesting. From the feedback, some of my class mates thought that I was trying to make the ident appeal more towards a younger audience so they will be interested in Sky Arts, some thought it was heading towards a teenage audience but most thought it was towards an adult audience with the channel being Sky Arts. All of the answers were positive to me because it meant that different people had different ideas about the ident, which I was trying to achieve. I liked this. Finally everyone’s answer was the last thing to read through. With the text box, I made my class write a couple of sentences to explain why they chose the category they chose in the boxes. This was a half and half sided answers. Half the answers were saying that the ident was very simple which made it very retro, which is what Sky Arts tries to do. So the ident works quite well at hitting at the target audience I was trying to achieve. The other half of the answers were because of it being a cartoon and very basic, it points towards a younger audience, which is okay it reaches out to adults alike, but it’s hitting at children and teenagers. So the answers were very mixed. Overall, my class mates were agreeable with what I was out to achieve which was create a retro ident which was basic enough to be made on Adobe Flash. I achieved my goal but also hit another, which was a hit another target audience which is a younger audience.

I never received any more feedback from any other sources like Sky, Channel 4 (which I wasn’t expecting) but I also didn’t get any feedback from any social messaging sites that I use either. I put the ident on sites like Twitter and Facebook as soon as I finished, but no feedback was given, but it doesn’t matter, I have enough feedback to go on.

To conclude then, my animation received the feedback that I was hoping for and more. My feedback said that my animation was a success with achieving what I was trying to aim for in the first place, and aiming for a younger audience too, which is something I wasn’t even trying to do, which is even better. So overall, very successful feedback.

storyboards

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Research

Ident 1: MTV Live HD Backstage

For the first ident, I looked for something that stood out from most. ‘The Grid’ is showing shows from channels from America like MTV including sitcoms and music. What better channel to research then than MTV. MTV has had a massive impact on television and music since back in the 80’s and 90’s. They regularly show music with a mixture of sitcoms from mostly America but sometimes the UK too. MTV has done what most channels do too, and that’s being different. MTV has managed to stand out from the rest of most channels by being a quirky, loveable and mainstream channel.

This ident from one of MTV’s several channels is called MTV Live HD. The channel plays mostly music that’s from live performances, all in High definition. This ident is extremely unusual as it has a simple story but then completely changes to something completely out of the ordinary. The ident is all animation which means the creativity flows completely but it’s really striking. One of the people in the animation comes to life and turns in what the image shows above. Then the MTV logo appears on the screen. What this shows for me is that the ident is making a statement. MTV, like I have said, has always tried to make a statement to what they are all about, and that is different. MTV creates and makes an atmosphere for a younger generation, which means it must be something which sticks out into their minds. Today’s generation is all about being different and not being ‘mainstream’. It’s such a silly concept but everyone tries to be something which somebody else isn’t.

Ident 2: Sky Arts 1

Since I’m designing a Sky Arts ident, I thought I may as well look at an ident by them to research. This particular ident is interesting because it’s representing different cultures. The name ‘Arts’ is made from the pieces of the background which is what televisions used to show when a channel was off air. So the channel is showing other cultures and being very nostalgic.

Like the MTV Ident, the Sky Arts one is very unusual because it’s creating something out of the background which we later find out to be the Sky Arts logo. What it’s trying to do is become very arty due to the nature of the channel. All of the shapes start to move again once the ‘arts’ logo has made its shape. The ident is trying to what most channels want to once again, and that’s being different. The channel is for art purposes, which means it shows programs that are all about art

 

Proposal

Proposal

I have had two separate ideas for my idents from the beginning, and I am sticking with these two ideas right now. The ideas I have represent a Sky Arts theme. I first watched some Sky Arts idents and thought of some things which would look good on the channel.

Planning:

For my planning, as I said I first looked at idents that were on Sky Arts. My first idea is very basic and simple to understand. The ident begins with a man holding a tin of green paint, the lid is off. He throws the paint at the camera’s view. Once the paint has been thrown, everything freezes and the camera moves to behind the man, to see where the paint has been thrown. The audience is then introduced to a plain canvas which is about to get covered in green paint. The ident then plays again and the paint splashes everywhere. The man then drops the paint tin and looks at the canvas and smiles. The camera looks straight at the canvas and it shows the ‘Arts’ logo in the middle of the canvas.

My second idea was something completely different but still runs in the theme of arts. It begins with a plain white coloured room. In the middle of the floor is a multi coloured blob on paint which slowly grows and gets bigger around the room. The camera zooms into spots of the paint and slowly starts to make the arts logo in the middle of the room.

The production budget for an average ident costs around £25,000. I estimated that for my ident, this would include things like props and cameras to create and film everything, my ident would cost around the same amount. The cost would also go towards things like computers to put everything together so I can fully create the ident.

I decided that my first idea would be the one that I choose, it seemed more creative and original to me. The timescale for creating this ident would take me around 3-4 weeks. This is because I am creating the ident in flash from scratch.

For the roles and management, it’s very simple; I will be creating and managing everything with the ident. I don’t really need anyone else in the process of creating because it’s something which doesn’t require any help. I know all of the things I need to do to create and make the ident. All of the paperwork required in making the ident is mainly done already. I have my action plan and diary updated every day, along with my storyboards with everything for now.

Design development:

The storyboarding was something I designed which is simple. I only made three pictures for each storyboard because I wanted it to be simple and easy enough to understand. The storyboard for the ident I am creating was easy to understand because it’s something which doesn’t take much to understand at all.

The timing of the animation is something I took into account. I was either making an ident which was for introducing the next program on the channel, or I was making an ident which goes in-between adverts for advertisements about programs. I chose an ident which introduces the next program because that means I have more time for the ident. On average an ident lasts around 15-20 seconds long, which is around the same amount that my ident will be. The ident I’m creating won’t be reduced or made differently to the original idea I had in the first place; it will stay exactly the same, no changes will be made. The concept I made in the first place will stay exactly the same.