Finished!!!

Finally finished! Luckily there wasn't too much to do today on the last day. We were hoping to have it finished yesterday however obvious technical difficulties slowed us down somewhat.

Jess and I managed to change the text on the last titles and add in the logo, and Alex put all the background sound together and in time, which I then placed into animation. Now it is a finished piece I think we've pulled it together pretty well.

I like the style that it is in, particularly the background designs and the design of Winnie and I think the two now work well together, as this was an area we were all a little unsure about when first creating the concept art and tests.

I also really enjoyed doing all the lip-sync parts. I perhaps could have given the character a little more movement as all of the talking scenes are from the same direction and position each time. If I had moved her body and arms a little more it may have brought her character into the piece even more rather then focusing on the mouth movements. I also think perhaps when she was talking we could have changed the camera shot and had a closer view of her speaking, however, due to wanting to keep as much of the background in as possible as well as side characters (such as the bird)and background animation I think it's best we kept it from that view point. This also maintains consistency from the first to last scene so the audience can hopefully understand she is in the same place even though her surrounding have become much brighter and dream-like.

As everyone in the group was focusing on different scenes I was a bit concerned that the animation, when put together, would have different styles and change throughout. However I think we did quite well to maintain the consistency of the characters and design style through the piece, only making a few changes. I feel that some scenes are a lot stronger then others and some we also worked longer on and thought about in more detail then others. I do think this shows in places, however as a whole the scenes link well and this proved quite an effective way of working as we all focused on what needed to be done for our own scenes and could get on with it meeting as often as possible to make sure everyone was on track and doing things in a similar way.

If I was to do this project again or had more time to work on it, I think I would really try and build a character for Winnie for the lip-sync parts and get more of her spirit and movement into the body of the character. I would also play around with some of the camera angles. Having just had the storyboard feedback I can see how important these are in creating emotion and making scenes look more interesting and I think maybe we could have thought about this in a bit more detail before beginning to animate. Although I think we did plan quite well as a group, if we had more time planning and developing ideas, without worrying about the amount of time we had to create and edit it all, I think the piece could have had a very different look about it, particularly because of the differences of style opinion there was towards the start of the project. If we had bounced ideas off each other in a more creative way and tried to bring some ideas together over a longer time period we perhaps would have found a completely different method and style to work in.

I think overall our group worked well together, however maybe needing a few more meetings and more time spent working in the studio all together so that everyone knew exactly where we were and what they could be working on.
Having said that I am really pleased with the final look and animation as it is and I'm so relieved we had no more last minute problems and got it all finished the way we wanted :)