The objective of
this project was to create an animation piece for The Nottingham Young Creative
Awards, we would have to identify what our Target Audience would be and to
ensure that the project would be appealing to this audience. The Nottingham
Young Creative Awards Brief stated that we would have to create project themed
Nottingham Loves… within one of the ten categories, of which I personally chose
Animation and Digital Media.
For my project I
felt that I had very good knowledge of Nottingham’s Nature and Wildlife, so
this would obviously be the best subject to base my project on, I decided that
my Target Audience would be children ages 3 to 7 and their parents, the reason
I decided this was because I believe it would be nice to pass some of my
personal knowledge on to the younger generations within Nottingham. Another
reason for me choosing children as my Target Audience was that I have noticed
that there are little informative documents that explain what is on offer in
the area for children to do, this project would obviously give Nottingham
citizens and tourists an understanding of what is available to them.
I believe that this
design would probably work best being displayed on the information screens at
Nottingham’s various transport stops, this is because the most direct and
simple route into Nottingham City centre is by using is various transport
methods, with the high traffic use of these methods of transport there is a
higher chance of people seeing the design.
To ensure that my
Target Audience would be interested in my project, I would have to ensure that
my design was bright, eye catching and most of all informative. I played with
many different ideas to determine what would be the best design, eventually I came
to the conclusion that the design that would appeal most to the Target Audience
was the 2D Pin Puppet design.
When structuring my
project I first had to create a basic story board so that I could ensure that
the project flowed smoothly, this was done by gathering all the facts which I
wished to include within the design, and then creating a scene to fit each set
of facts.
Once I had decided
on all the scenes which would be included I then needed to create a background
for each scene, this was done using Adobe Photoshop, to ensure that each scene
was relevant to Nottingham I browsed the Internet and visited places around Nottingham
to give me inspiration for my background designs. With the backgrounds
complete, I then needed to create the Characters that would go in each scene,
the Characters would be 2D Pin Puppets. Using Adobe Photoshop again I created
each movement piece for each character, saving them individually, once all the
pieces were designed I then imported them into one file where I was able to pin
each segment together allowing me to move each piece individually.
After all the
Characters and Backgrounds were completed I then imported them into Adobe
Premier Pro, this is where I would create the complete scene. With each
Character I had to create the Animation of their walk cycle or the motion they
would be doing in that scene. This was done using the Puppet Pin Tool, this
would allow me to use the characters I had created and animate each piece quite
simply.
With all the Scenes
now animated I needed to ensure that the sounds fitted correctly. For each
scene I required a different ambient soundtrack and also the sounds that each
of the characters would be making, these sounds clips were collected from a
website called sounddogs.com. Using the sound manipulation software within
Adobe Premier Pro, I was able to blend all the character sounds quite nicely
and to ensure that each scene would blend with the previous and following scene
without any overlap.
Overall I feel that
my design worked rather well, with the sounds and visual blending quite nicely,
I believe it was successful in its goal to deliver detailed and relevant
information about the Nature and Wildlife in and around Nottingham to the
Target Audience.
In future I will
ensure that any text that is in a project does not overlap any of the
animations that are taking place, I also feel that I could improve my time
management skills, by setting myself miniature deadlines, this is to ensure
that certain tasks are complete by a certain time, allowing me to focus all my
efforts on the task at hand, and also giving myself a few completely empty days
at the end of the project to ensure that if there are any modifications and
improvements that could be made, I could make them quite simply. I feel that I
could have also added some more sounds to the characters, this is because at
points the backing soundtrack that runs throughout the entire design sometimes
partially drowns out the ambient sound for some scenes.
