Esting Evaluation

Finished E4 esting

My E4 esting was a short insight into the life of animated partier ‘Afroman’. It showed him dancing the night away in a colourful disco then ended with him magically pulling out a clay E4 logo out an holding it above his head. During this task enjoyed putting the set and character together. I also enjoyed coming up with a wacky fun idea which would fit the genre that E4 esting tend to be. Another aspect I enjoyed would be learning how to animate clay characters successfully. However I didn’t enjoy the frustrations of not being able to get your character exactly how you wanted him and also not being able to get your set to look just right like the picture you have in your head beforehand. One other aspect I really didn’t enjoy would be trying to get the character to move realistically without it either braking or continuously falling over. A couple of things I feel could really be improved upon would be the lighting consistency and also one other thing would be the smoothness of the camera movements. One thing I think was really good about my esting and I wouldn’t change would be the setting and character designs as I felt that they both worked really well. Feedback

To allow your friends and family to view your work you can enable them by sharing the video on twitter, YouTube and Facebook etc. I personally shared it on twitter and YouTube and this enabled a large amount of my friends and family to view the esting with ease. This also enables your friends and family to reply to your link with either compliments or criticism. On my YouTube comments I got a mixture of both but largely positive feedback however my twitter attempt failed as no one took the time out to review.

The criteria in which the group had to get our feedback on were genre, character, content, techniques, style, narrative, technical, aesthetic & creative quality. I collected my audience responses by using various different techniques for example, questionnaires, focus group, reviews, discussions and feedback from online exhibition. I could have done this a little better if I had exhibited it online a bit more for example I could have put it on Facebook and potentially got some more feedback from there however at the time I decided against it. 

This is some of the feedback I got according to the criteria: Genre: The overall answer I got from my questionnaires referring to what genre the esting was, “Comedy.” Character: “Like the character and the idea looks really good.” Was a bit of feedback I got from a comment left under my YouTube video. Content: In my video at the end my character pulls out an E4 logo to make the purpose of the video a little more obvious. It seems the people who have given me feedback picked up on this as they all resoundingly confirmed its suitability, “Definitely” was one of the many answers to question, ‘Do you think this is a suitable E4 esting?’

 Techniques: The technique I used was Claymation which is a form of stop motion animation. Although my skills were pretty limited though and that was sometimes evident in the video as at times it was a little jumpy and the lighting was a tad inconsistent at times. This may have been because I moved the character a bit too much between shots. A comment left on YouTube picks up on this problem, “Really good, the lighting was slightly off on some shots and the camera moved too much apart from that it was well done.” Style: The style of animation I went for was Claymation stop motion animation. During a discussion this comment came up when I asked about what they thought of the style of mine, “the concept of the video lends its self really well to Claymation and would have been attractive to younger audiences also.” 

Narrative: Although the video is only 10 seconds long it does have a very simplistic narrative following a young funky man showing of his groovy moves in a disco. In a discussion it was mentioned that “although your video is very short it does have a little narrative with a funky man in a disco.” 

Technical: In my video I tried to include a lot of different technically good camera angles and movement into my video and this seemed to pay off as one of the positives I got back from the focus group was, “Angles and movement are very complimentary.” 

Aesthetic: In my questionnaire I asked the question ‘Do you think this video is aesthetically pleasing?’ and all the answers on the questionnaires were positive an example of an answer would be, “Yes, the model and set are well made.” 

Creative quality: My creative quality did split the feedback as some people didn’t think ‘Afroman’ fit the disco setting however generally they thought it was overall a good fit, “Like the character and the idea looks really good” this was just one of many positive comments I got back about my overall idea for the esting. 

Once you have received all your feedback there are many ways of publishing the results for example, when I had received all of my feedback I wrote a written report about it on my blog. Another way to do it would be to do an oral presentation. Action plan and reviews are two other ways of evaluating feedback. These two would be the most helpful if you are going to do a second draft as they will highlight the strengths and weaknesses of your production. The action plan I did (focus group) was really helpful. Overall I believe my work was good and met all the recommended requirements set by both my tutor and the E4 website. 

Although the final piece could’ve been better in many ways, I do believe considering the budget and equipment I was provided with it turned out to be a fairly successful E4 esting.

Evaluation Part 2

The brief we were giving for this project was on the E4 website and it was advertised as a competition. The brief stated the few entry requirements we had, which were that we had a deadline, time frame and to make sure we maintained the E4 brand. Also the prize we would be working towards was our esting being on television and also a financial prize of £5000 if you are voted first prize and £500 if you come second.

In this blog post I will be evaluating how well I worked to the brief I was given. The brief I was following was from E4 as they let me know that the task was to create a 10 second esting which incorporated the E4 logo whilst also advertising the channel. Additionally from their brief I also used questionnaires in order to help me successfully complete this task.  This blog post is a written report on how I feel I met the requirements of the brief. 

During this project I like many others experienced a few constraints stopping me from doing certain things with my esting. First of all one constraint everyone encountered was the legal constraint which was to do with copyright. This constraint meant that we couldn't have whatever song we wanted in fact we had to choose from the tunes we were provided with from E4. 

Another constraint we encountered was regulatory, this meant we had to make sure our videos wouldn’t be flagged up by regulatory companies such as OFCOM and BBFC. This meant we had to make sure our estings didn’t contain any offensive material e.g. nudity or excessive violence. One constraint I had was that we were creating these models in the cold winter which meant we had to find ways of keeping the clay character warm otherwise it could break when moved. Another regulatory constraint was that we had a set deadline which meant we had a time limit on how long we could take to complete the project. The final constraint I struggled with would be the financial aspect. In this project I didn’t have a budget which led to limited equipment for the esting. For example, If I would have had a big boy budget I could’ve invested in a big scale set which would have made the video look a lot more realistic and overall professional however because I didn’t have this budget I ended up using an A4 box as a set which is a little less glamorous. In this project like all others we were set deadlines we had to meet which as always tests your time and work load skills. 

During this task I organised myself very well as I met the deadline however due to a technical fault in one of the macs I did have to rush at the end as I had to finish off the editing in a short amount of time. This was the only time during the project I overloaded myself with work but this wasn’t due to my incompetence instead the computer I was using. I felt also my communication with my tutor was spot on as it needed to be whilst I was in trouble with the computer and seeing as I turned out alright that must mean we communicated well.

I also came up with work which achieved the targets set to me by E4. The video also was of fairly good quality, receiving praise from my tutor. “Really liked the funky set design and like that fact it’s really suitable for the target audience.” Ellie Buchan (Tutor). The feedback I got from my questionnaires was mainly positive with a few bits of constructive criticism thrown in the mix. I got my feedback from a wide range of people, from a 41 year old housewife all the way down to a 9 year old school girl.

This particular project did help me in narrowing down what I want to do in my life career wise. This animation section has developed my media skills immensely giving me another skill in my locker if ever called upon. Although I do want to do want to one day go in to the media industry I don’t think animation is for me as the constant attention to detail type processes would drive me crazy. I believe animation is for patient creative people with a lot of passion for this certain area however this isn’t me at all.