Evaluation

While this project is not the first time I have had to work in a group to complete a task, it is the first time I have been paired with an advertiser, or a student from any other art form for that matter, so I have to admit I found this new experience rather challenging. Perhaps the most daunting aspect was being flung into a group consisting of people I’m not used to being with. Unfortunately my natural reaction in such cases is to let my shyness take over and barely speak, so I initially found it difficult to talk to my advertising partner about ideas. However I soon got on the same wavelength as Smiley, and I feel we co-operated well throughout the project. The trickiest part was trying to split the tasks between us so that we could each do our own work without getting in the other’s way. Since we both have very different styles of drawing and animating, I feared our work would clash and make the advert look inconsistent if we both worked on the same character. We overcame this discussing our strengths beforehand and playing to them. Having used Flash longer, Smiley knows the program far better than I do and had a much better idea of how to go about tweening objects and motion paths etc, whereas I’m more comfortable animating frame by frame and focusing on expressions and character animation. So we decided I would create and animate the two main characters and the background for the advert while she worked on the pupils changing to fruits in the eyes, the fruit pastilles falling from the box, and any other technical aspects. Overall I think this method worked well; we were able to combine our work without any trouble and helped each other along the way by keeping in contact while working on the files. The final result looks consistent, and I’m pleased with how it’s turned out.