Fantastic Voyage: Reflective Statement

Compared to the other projects I can defiantly say this is the one I struggled with the most and the one I think I have also grown more from as well. I think a lot of my problems started after the Pitch, when I had to try and re start my story, while also trying to keep up with the rest of the class and the deadline, this was also a problem as with most of my other projects I feel I didn't fully grasp the full amount of work I had to do, until I was too deep into it, which came around the Easter holidays when I had no Animatic and realised that I didn't have time to produce a Pre-Viz if I wanted to get some of the finished product animated and rendered on time. At that point I decided, from my experience from my Script to Screen project that I would run with the workload I felt I could achieve to the highest of my ability, rather than scramble to pull together the full animation which I'm very happy I did because currently I'm still happy with the animation I made and am willing to complete it, which I feel I wouldn't of have been if I had chosen to try and push out a full 3 minute sequence.

I have learned a lot about skinning and rigging, which I'm happy with as I think this will help me more in second and third year, but I also feel I have learned a lot about my own style of working and thats I get more out of the experience if I go my own way and take my time, rather than trying to do everything to please someone else, which is why I took more time skinning than I needed too, because I knew it would be important in making the final animation look clean and neat and I'm happy I took the time out to do it. Doing this also caused me less stress in the final two weeks of the project, which I feel helped in me finishing the animation the way I did as a lot of the decisions I had time to think about and explore rather than ignoring and trying to push out at the last minute, as I have done in the past. 

In terms of the final product, I am still annoyed that I haven't cracked the code for making this course easier for myself, as I still ended up working a lot more than I feel other people did to achieve the same thing, so I still need to work on that and I feel that might come out of me trying to at least produce a Playblasted finished animation for this project, so I can get a feel for how long it should of been and how I can cut out some of the decisions I made for this project in the future. I also feel that I need to be okay with choosing options that don't look as good on paper, but will be easier to achieve down the line, such as choosing less characters in the story or sets to design, which will give me a chance to focus on the areas I skip over like texturing and neater set designing, which I wish I paid more attention to. With my Fantastic Voyage I think I pulled off the style by going with what I liked at the time and combining what the layout of the island and the final tortoise designs looked like to the textures, which did work out in my favour and I'm happy without they turned out, especially since they all diverge so much from my original concept art. 

This project has also taught me a lot about doing things un-prepared as I had to piece together the product using my script and storyboard to make it all work, this did make me concerned that the final thing would end up feeling like a draft version of itself, but I happy that it was liked and I am able to still use it going forward, which has given me great confidence about going about things with my gut and own ideas rather that sticking tightly to past ideas and designs, even if they don't work. So even though this project was very hard, I feel that I have gained more from it than I have achieved in the end, which I'm more pleased with as it will serve me better in the future.