Armageddon !!!!

Well thats it, my Uni life is finally over :( I have just handed in my final major projects and it seems surreal now its done. Its' been a lot of hard work and time spent on these projects but I have loved every moment of it and have learned so much and hopefully will pursue this career in the near future, and fingers crosses I will graduate with good grades. Here is a general evaluation of my major projects....

Major Project Pre Production

As a whole this project, I believe worked well. It took a long time to complete and was the main project I worked on. There were a lot of quite strong areas of work and there were areas that could be worked on. I think areas that needed to be developed were the storyboards and final animatic. I struggled in some of these areas but I managed to complete them nevertheless. Stronger areas of my work include my character and background concepts. I have learned new techniques and methods using various media and software packages. Primarily, I used photoshop and illustrator, yet I dabbled with Flash and After Effects. I would like to get more in touch with all of the softwares used, but more with After Effects and Flash as their capabilities are almost endless. If I were to re-do a project such as this again, which I am sure I will, i'll focus more on certain areas, such as storyboarding and producing animatics.
Yet as a whole I think this project was quite successful.

Personal Project

This was my favourite project as it was completely different to the others I worked on. I created a maquette based on a character I have designed in my major project. This was something that I had not touched on in a long time and I thoroughly enjoyed doing it. As a final piece it was quite strong. The final sculpt worked quite well and the paint finish worked effectively. There were some areas that were quite weak such as certain painted areas, which ended up quite lumpy while other aspects such as the back legs were slightly off model. I had to make them this way because the original legs and paws would not support the maquette. I also created small props and bits and bobs to try and compliment the final piece. I have learned a lot about maquettte making from this project, such as how to cook the model and make effective structures underneath. I have also learned what not to do. I will certainly create more maquettes in the future as I love making them, its' also a good way of keeping diverse in the animation field.

Collaboration

The collaborative pieces I worked on were totally contrast with each other and have given me some new methods of producing my work. I have designed pieces for posters, storyboards, character designs,  and graphic logos. It has been a good project as it has kept me diverse, which is important in the field. The most beneficial one for me was the design of my friends company logo. I began caricaturing designs but these weren't working too well, so I then designed logos with a more stylistic approach and graphic style which worked well. Creating basic silhouettes which I think would be succesful. Other projects such as storyboarding was a great side project to do, as it not only homed in on my storyboarding skills, but allowed me to break away from designing storyboards for 2D pieces, in this case it was for a second year CG student. So as a whole I think they all benefitted me in different ways.