Reflection

I feel that with my animation, though I did it under a very short time frame, I managed to achieve some good quality work. I think I have some very clear influences in terms of the design of my machine, the art style and overall flow of the animation works smoothly. I feel that I showed the functionality of the machine quite simply in a way that was clearest to the viewer, I may potentially have been able to make the system longer and more complex to make the animation more interesting, but I feel that the way I have done it provides a clear and effect representation of recycling. I did stray a little bit from my initial roughs, but I look at that more as a development rather than a negative as they are like I said, roughs.

My influences for the animation are based around the idea of recycling and sustainability, but I didn't want that to become a major, in your face this is what this animation is about "we need a change" message because people are likely to be getting tired of seeing the same old message again and again. I just wanted to show a recycling system working in one of its simpler forms to show that nothing is useless, but in fact it can be used to create something new and exciting.

I found a few issues arose when rendering out the whole sequence. Working in flash, there are some serious restrictions to do with the program, that cause crashes time and time again, and if you are not careful you can lose a lot of work very easily. In order to work around this I not only saved often, but broke up my project into multiple different files, one for each new shot or scene. This allowed a better workflow, so I could easily edit specific shots and adjust length travel speeds etc. I found that this kind of work flow allowed me to be a lot more organised in what I was doing and made my progress go a lot faster and become more efficient.

I think I made the right decision in moving on from my initial idea, as through experimentation around the style I was using I realised it wasn't going to work well for me, and managed to move on from a potentially disastrous animation. This experimentation process was very important in reaching my final goal as it was clearly a major turning point for my entire project, and I feel that because of this I have made a much better animation than I ever could have using the previous style.