Finished! :)

Finished the Ident at last! horray!
I'm very glad to have got the final animation completed and think that I've managed to do it in quite good time having about a day left just incase anything had gone horribly wrong.

Thinking back to the start of the ident project I think I chose the right idea to work on and develop. I think my animation is quite different to some of the others in terms of both style and content, however I think maybe I was trying to get too much into the 5 second ident and could have simplified it from the start.

Seeing everyones work around the studio, all of the idents look great and some of the 3D ones have been amazingly modelled and put together. I'm glad I chose to do mine in 2D however. Given the time limit and the fact that I feel a lot more confident about 2D then 3D I think this was probably the best idea. I also feel that I have learnt so much about Flash and 2D then I knew before and feel pretty comfortable using it for anything now. There were some areas that took some getting used to and trial and errors for example making everything into symbols, which at first I never remebered to do, making everything very confusing and complicated. I think I got there eventually though and got used to how the program worked.

With Andys' help with the editing and cutting the intial storyboard down I think that the final ident is around the right length, quite fast flowing and punchy. I think perhaps at the beginning I was trying to get too much of a story into the piece rather then focusing on the ident and its purpose.

If I could change any parts of the ident as it is now, I think I would either work a little more on the drawings and make them sketchier so that they looked purposefully roughly drawn, or neaten them all up a little bit, just to make it look better produced and finished in a more professional way. I may also change some of the character movements and expressions to give them more personality and so that there is a bit more individual movement in them. However again I think this would only work if the ident was longer and I had a long time to put more of a story into the work.

If I could further the piece of work I would also look more into the effects that could be used in post production. For example think about the lighting a little more. When the asteroid is getting closer to them I could have made the background darker and more shadowy with the light from the flames lighting the characters making them glow slightly giving the piece a bit more atmosphere.

The sound I think I could have worked on more. At the beginning of the project I was thinking of using some kind of music as a background, but not really having any particular piece in mind when it came to adding the music, I didnt really know what I was looking for. In the end I used sound effects which I think worked quite well as it builds up the atmosphere of the ident quite well. This is an area I should have thought about a little more throughout the project or perhaps even used as a starting point. For the next project I'd like to take the sound into consideration a lot more as I now realise how important it is and how it can change the animation completely.

Overall I am pleased with how the piece came out and its general look. I think the sky worked well having quite a 3D look about it as I made it as a sky dome in maya and took a still from it as a background.

I'm glad I used Flash and am happy with the results and feel confident in using it now, however I still think I need to do the same thing with 3D and use Maya for another project in order to really get to know it and understand it via trail and error and learning in order to actually make something for a project.

A still from the final ident: