A personal reflection of the final product and how successful the overall project was because it is important to see what could have been improved given more time and what parts have achieved their maximum output.

There are several positives to the overall project, firstly being the design and style of the characters, poster and artistic work. By using Adobe Illustrator the project includes new and exciting designs that have further pushed my skills this year, including the use of colour, typography and layout to create the best effects for the audience to see.

Adding new effects to the title sequence in the form of ™displacement map∫ expresses the horror theme to ™Jessica∫ and improves the product from the beginning by adding an exciting opening.

Sound in a critical element to the entire piece, with the use of sound effects keeping the audience entertained and engaged throughout the entire animation. In particular the sound track of ™Brink∫ helps build up the anxiety as Josephine makes her way through each location to the end and ultimate discovery, that is further executed by a terrifying scream.

Constructively the animations movements and motion could have been further improved, issues through the process meant parts where Josephine could have been animated walking, instead of simply changing position would have added to the overall quality if the piece, although i don’t think this takes too much away from the overall products finish and presentation.

Voice acting might have given additional content to the piece, perhaps with actors saying certain lines at various parts of the story to hint to the plot of the film more, however this would have been both time consuming and costly if professional actors had been hired.

The animation could have been made longer possibly, although I don’t think this would add much more content, a teaser trailer needs to be kept short and to the point, no more than a minute/ minute and a half. Otherwise the audience will become bored and lose interest in what the product is trying to promote.

Finally the animation ™Jessica∫ tells its story well and makes the most of several key elements that make a media program/ show/ story or product. The overall project includes content in the form of posters, concepts, sketches and screen-shots to showcase how it was made and where the problem occurred, as well as how the final piece came together. This project was a work of dedication, patients and passion and included little help from the client, making it a large solo task that was to the most part successful.

Overall I have found this project to be both difficult and challenging at many points, including communication, changes and further skills development.

To begin the project went through several major changes including an original idea of developing a interactive website for the film company to showcase their work on. This fell through as the team decided to extend their project from a semester A finish, to a semester B finish, this meant very little filming would be done by the time this project would be due for submission and therefore I would have hardly any content to put onto a website.

My contribution was then changed to helping animate part of the sizzle reel for the purpose of funding, something myself and my tutor Clive McCarthy agreed upon, as it would provided enough content and work to be graded at the end of the module. However I encountered further problems when at the end of week 6 of the project, after a large proportion of the research had already been carried out, the Producer, Patrycja Reimus decided to send me a late night Facebook message essentially dropping me from the project.

This is something that I can only view as completely unprofessional and even more irritating, however after further discussion with Patrycja and Clive, I decided to make an animated teaser trailer for the short film ™Jessica∫.

I thoroughly enjoyed the research and development aspects of this project, watching and how to animate and experimenting with different sketches and drawings is something I do in my free time anyway, so I didn’t find this part too taxing. However I had several issues with grasping how to animate Josephine and Jessica in each scene, trying various techniques but running into problems later.

In the end I decided to go from a simplistic but not basic animation that reflected the mood and theme of ™Jessica∫ whilst still telling some of the story. This project wasn’t by any means easy and I felt I had to step up my skills, designs, patients and determination from 2nd year in order to achieve the final product, research and development.

It’s been a busy few weeks for the project, with many of the final stages of work coming together to create the animation.

The following includes now completed project parts:

– Title sequence.

– Animation Scenes.

– Music/ Sound effects.

– End Credits.

– Research and Development document.

– Final Piece YouTube upload.

This final week has involved filling out the Individual Outcome Critique and finalising the R&D submission document before this coming Thursday.

A conclusion and evaluation will follow.