The Classical Elements: Final Crit

During our final crit we presented our final animations/where we had got up to, a week before the actual deadline. I thought this was a good chance to see other people's work and art style in general, and how they interpreted the brief independently.

I found I got a lot of feedback for my animation and a lot of it was actually positive. My primary concern was to do with the aesthetic and the colour of my animation, and this seemed to be the element people were most pleased about which I was really grateful for. It took me a while to get the colour combinations right, but I think it was worth the trial and error because the feedback I received was positive.

I was also really surprised at the response to the first playback of the animation. I didn't have any intention to make it 'comical', but during the scream part of the sequence, I noticed people thought it was funny, and I was also pretty pleased with this response as well. I didn't think I was able to provoke any reaction from my element, but I am very happy I did.

Some constructive criticism I received, was to have the scream of my match stick woman not so loud and high pitched, because it was very intense. I did notice this myself, but didn't know if it was just my headphones or not, so that is something I definitely plan to change. Also someone suggested if I was to be picky to perhaps enlarge the match stick woman's eyes when she is on fire, just for a bit more exaggeration. I was going to do this instantly, but then noticed when you scream in person, usually your eyes are shut, and so I wanted to keep my animation as realistic as possible and decided against this.

I also brought up the question whether I should bring in the scream a bit sooner as it seems a bit delayed to me, but I found that no one really noticed this aspect and they thought the timing was fine. If you think about when someone actually screams, they don't do it right away, there is an actual delay, so once someone told me that, I thought that I was just being too picky here as well.

Overall I feel like I got a lot from this crit, and also come confidence. I think I am being able to explore colour more strongly and also learning how to combine sound to make an equally effective animation.