Sting Production - Group Reflection

When we were introduced to this brief I was looking forward to the prospect of working in a team on a chosen sting as I liked the look of a lot of the animatics that were created by the class. The production took off to a good start as we exchanged contact information and initial design ideas for a background which was our starting point. I realised early on that my team mate was very talented in the designing process and I therefore felt a little nervous that my work and contributions would not be up to his standard. However, this appeared to be overlooked as he kept copies of my work and gave me tasks to do.

We agreed near the start of the project that he would deal with animating the main character in the sting and I would create the minor characters as I felt the animating process wasn't particularly my strongest area and I obviously didn't want that to affect the final outcome. I found animating the birds quite a challenge as wing cycles can be quite complex but my team mate seemed happy with the work. I enjoyed designing and animating the squirrel which I chose to do on my own as the original inspirational video featured a simple grey squirrel which really added to the 'calm' effect that my team mate wanted at the start of his sting. He was also happy with the squirrel so things seemed to be going well. I was then asked to colour and export the Photoshop files in preparation for importation into After Effects. From this point I felt like communication broke down a little as he was not clear in the stage he was up to and didn't seem to assign me anything else to do.

My team mate kept asking me over a couple of weeks to keep adding to the short animations I created to develop them which I did and then sent to him. It seemed in my eyes he had become very protective over his work as he wasn't showing me the stage he was up to and I was a little confused as to what he wanted me to do next. I kept consistent email communication with my team mate asking for some clarity in what I should be doing but he seemed to want to do it all himself. I really just wanted him to keep me in the loop and assign me tasks even if he wasn't going to use them in the final sting.

I was eventually asked to collect sound which I was happy with doing as I quite enjoyed collecting sound for my own sting idea. The following week after been set this individual job I asked him what else he wanted me to do and he just said keep collecting more sound which I didn't object to and therefore overlayed some new sounds over the original animatic. This is when I glanced at his screen and saw that the composition had changed quite a lot from the original animatic and that my work didn't appear to be in the After Effects project. I spoke to my tutor about this as I felt that communication had deteriorated and that it had become a project he was just doing alone. He then informed me that he had changed some of my work and didn't tell me because he didn't want to offend me. As a director I want him to tell me what to do and I will not be offended by changes or constructive criticism.

I found out in this last week that he has been telling people in the class that I have not been doing much work for this project and I could not help but get upset by this as that kind of judgement should be discussed with me and not told to peers outside of the group as it has nothing to do with them at all. I have not felt that I have done as much work as I wanted to but this is down to the fact my team mate did not take on the role of director effectively and consequently left me with little to no work to be done. However, I put my full commitment into the work I have done and feel I have made progress.

I learnt from this project that I like assisting in the production of other people's work, communication is vital in a production team and that in future I would prefer to work on my own.

Sting Production - Animation Stages

After discussion with my team member we decided that he would concentrate on the animation of the main character in the animatic and I would take on the more smaller roles of the characters such as the birds flying at the beginning.

I began by doing some rough poses and sketches in Photoshop to familiarize myself with the characters.

I used this reference image in order to practice the bird wing cycles.

Initial rough poses/sketches of the smaller birds flying at the beginning of the animation.

Flying ducks key pose practice.

From creating these rough sketches I realised there were some alignment issues with the flying ducks (including the right duck's feet) and that the wings needed a lot of work in the smaller birds, from here I then began to try out the key poses in Flipbook.