Minor Project: Reflective Statement

Before this project started, I was fully aware of my weaknesses, especially in terms of Maya, so I wanted to make something achievable and something that was within my skill level. By the end of this project, my aim was to get all 3 characters completed, as well as having an animatic/storyboard and script. I, unfortunately and annoyingly, didn't finish all of this and do now have to catch up during the major project, so this may cause a problem later down the line, in terms of time mainly. Because of this I decided to remove one of the 5 scenes from the animation, as I felt that it wasn't working quite as well as the others and felt a bit out of place.

Like previous projects that I have worked on, it took me a bit longer than I had hoped for me to get a stage where I fully understood what I was doing. Once I did start working, however, I do think my attitude has improved and I am now doing work more regularly, although I could still be doing more than I should, and a lot quicker also. This project has gone quite slowly in recent weeks because of my lack of experience and knowledge of using Maya to a high standard - Not doing enough tutorials in the previous years has really caught up on me. I have, currently, made 2 of the 3 character models, and despite the fact that they will need improving/tweaking in places, I think they work quite well for the specific characters, and I don't think I would have been able to make them at the same standard if I made them last year.

What I have learned from this project is that I really like writing scripts and making animatics - figuring out how the scene will work, what I can do to improve them, what style of camera shots to use and how I can have a bit of fun with the characters/camera through an animation. I think the script works well and will lead to a funny and enjoyable thing to watch. This is proving to be something that keeps purshing me on through the modelling side of the project, as I think in previous projects, I would have given up or would have settled for something of lower quality.

In conclusion, I think this project has shown me that I have improved in some ways, but am still far off from where I need to be. I need to improve a great deal during this next project and this is something I want to do, not only for the sake of my final grade, but because I believe that the final animation will be a good one, as long as it's made correctly and has no major issues with it.