Evaluation
Research: Throughout this whole project, I have been conducting research that is relevant to my own work, whether that be looking at other animations, other graphic novels, or even playing games and looking at how they implement cutscenes and animations. By doing this, it has allowed me to look at my work in a different way, and see how I could change certain scenes or implement different characteristics into the characters (which is what I did after researching The Pirates! and is what influenced me to make each of the characters have their own ‘Pirate’ characteristics such as peg-legs, eyepatches, bandanas, etc.). To find any of my research blog posts, look for [Research] at the end of each title.
Work Progression, Decision Making and Idea Changes: As I progressed through this project, I made sure to keep up a constant stream of blogs, whether it be conducting research, making production diaries, or creating anything else that is relevant to my work. At some points, there was a small break in between blog posts, as that is because I have to split my time between college and my job. This means that my Fridays and Saturdays were almost always taken up and I couldn’t produce again until Sunday came around. Even though I couldn’t produce blogs on these days, I still believe I produced a good amount of blogs in the time that I did have. The progression was natural between blogs and I don’t believe that there was anything that was out of sequence.
Inside some of my blogs, I also note how I have had to make some changes throughout my project, whether it be because the idea in general needed a change, the idea would have taken a lot of effort to create, or simply just time restrictions. At some point late in the project, I had to make the decision to put my focus on creating a smaller amount of pages to a higher quality, rather than sacrificing the quality and trying to just rush out the rest of the pages. While this was not a decision I liked making, it was necessary in order for me to make sure I had something good to show for all of the work that I had put in. In an ideal situation, I would have liked to have finished my graphic novel but instead, I will have to suffice with the lesser amount of pages.
Strengths and Weaknesses: At the start of this project, I created a proposal, in which I stated some of my strengths and weaknesses from previous projects. What I believed to be one of my strengths, was that I had gotten the hang of Adobe Flash and was confident with using it (for the most part) and I wanted to keep developing my skills, which I was successful in doing as I managed to get through work quicker than I used to be able to. This is mainly because I understood how keyframes work this time and managed to use them properly, as well as understanding how to make objects/buttons and code them properly, changing the code as necessary.
Alongside stating my strengths, I also stated my weaknesses; I wasn’t particularly skilled with GameMaker, however, as I was creating an Interactive Graphic Novel, this wasn’t entirely necessary for me, as I would not be using GameMaker, so I didn’t need to overcome this weakness. In future, I may need to overcome this weakness of mine, although if possible, I could work with someone who has experience with GameMaker and I could provide assets/cutscenes of some sort for them. While I did say that my skills I had previously learned in Flash was my strength, I still had the weakness of not knowing all of the features in Flash, such as making a motion tween. However, since then, I have overcome this and have even used a motion tween for one of my animations in my graphic novel.
Original Idea VS Final Idea: As previously mentioned in this evaluation, I had to make some changes to my project as time went on, for various reasons (time constraints, too complicated, etc.) and this has meant that my idea is not the same as I had once planned. For example, at the start of this project, I would have liked to have audio implemented into my graphic novel, however, due to having to focus all of my time on actually creating the panels for the graphic novel, and the animations for said panels, I was not able to find the time to record dialogue. There were also other minor alterations that were made, such as minor changes to the animations that I had planned for certain panels in my storyboards.
However, the biggest change that was made in this project happened before pre-production had even begun. When we were first told of this project, my plan was to create an animation that tells the story of the pirates, but this had to change due to the key factor of this term being Interactivity, meaning that the audience of your product had to be able to use the product in some way, and I realised that with an animation, this wouldn’t have been possible and that my story would be better told via the medium of an interactive graphic novel, giving the audience something to interact with, making them feel involved rather than just sitting there watching something.
Production Diaries: On my blog, I have created a total of nine different production diaries, showing the progress I’ve been making with my graphic novel each day and making updates on whether there have been any changes/problems, and also including how my research has helped me with some of these decisions. It was necessary for me to produce these production diaries as it shows how I am progressing with my work at each stage and saying whether or not things had gone well or if they had not gone so well, rather than just producing one blog at the end of the production and not talking about any of the issues that I had encountered, and instead, only talking about how much I had produced, and why I had produced my graphic novel in such a way. By showing my progress, I am also showing my creative thought process and the journey of the graphic novel, not just recapping the key moments.
Communicating to my Audience: One of the key focuses at the start of this project was making sure that we were aiming for the right target audience. After conducting a research survey, I found that the best target audience for my graphic novel would be people around the age of 12-15 years old. Having now reached the end of this project, I feel like that was the right choice, and I believe that my graphic novel effectively communicates towards the audience that it was intended for, both through the art style and through the story that is told. However, although I believe I have successfully targeted the right audience, I also believe there is still room to make it more relevant to their generation, using references to whatever is popular amongst them, or even implementing characters that are their age so that they can feel more relatable to the characters that are in the story, making them feel more connected to what is going on, furthering their immersion.
Conclusion: Overall, I am reasonably happy with the way my project turned out. It was a valuable learning experience for me as it taught me how important it is to keep track of time and make sure that you set yourself a reasonable goal that you can achieve within a restrained time frame. I learned this the hard way as I was unable to fully complete my graphic novel which, given the time, I would love to carry on with and eventually finish, possibly even adding in extra details and going back to refine some animations. Providing I get on to the next year of this course, I would love to continue developing my skills in Flash so that I can create better work, both in college and outside of college, whether it be simple animations or even creating new graphic novels. This project has also helped me to realise that this is what I enjoy doing, and not creating games like I initially thought when I joined this course.