My final outcome is a beautiful relaxed piece which has a deeper meaning and has an element of sincerity in the cautionary tale theme. It is executed like a whimsical fairytale in this bleak yet warm and welcoming background where the flames of the characters glow and produce gorgeous flowers. These fiery characters represent the musician and the flowers are their creative product. I chose to keep the hand’s of the buyout out of frame and only coming in from the side a few times in order to add the distance and uncaring nature between a buyer and a musician. The journey of the fire in the piece also represents the benefit of keeping royalties since the character’s fire becomes free and grows bigger.
However through all of this I have come to understand that I have lacked the addition of clarity to the piece since I did not properly consider the audience and how it might come across to them. The final piece is too representational and as part of an informative campaign this does not work. There needed to be more obvious descriptions and clear information provided since as a whole the piece is too vague. This require rethinking the imagery used and also how I used the characters in the piece, there is room for a lot more development within the piece. Such as considering how to represent royalties in the piece, such as royalties coming to the fire figured to make them stronger and brighter, I also could have played more with the fairytale element and had the free fire characters as godly beings offering their hand from the clouds and raising the suited figure to their level in the heavens. Thinking about these points makes me realise there is a flat monotone element to my piece, it lacks obvious development and depth. This could have been combatted by properly considering the brief and thinking how this could actually come across since it is not an art piece but a promotional campaign video.
As well as the lack of clarity in the main piece there was also no flow between this and the stings. They were quite separate stylistically which further emphasised how we had not properly met the brief. We needed to strike this balance between visuals, concept, message and audience across the main animation and the stings. We should have sat down and thought of an overreaching clear theme and message for all of them so that they could sit well together but also individually. My teammate and also I have very different skillsets which did not aid in creating this piece, however a better evaluation of abilities would have helped the project run smoother and thus the final outcome would have been clearer. This would have helped us realise what we are able to produce and then a more polished final product could be formed rather than setting up overconfident tasks which we could not execute in a beneficial and effective manner.
Since we chose not to use a voiceover, these aforementioned points were things we really needed to have paid attention to since there needed to be something giving the audience the information they needed in order to understand Ivor’s campaign. This idea needed to be landed with confidence and clarity which it was not, I became caught up in making sure that a level of delicacy and warmth was brought to a scary topic. I was too focused on creating my own world for these characters to exist in, when I needed to understand this brief better and know that my work process needs to be altered in order to meet different needs. Therefore it highlighted to be the important of editing what I do and how I need to alter my style in order to work with the manner something is communicated in a piece, such as with Ivor’s campaign. A campaign needs to be clear and provide information which the audience is able to understand easily and learn from. There was no need in this project for the level of symbolic and representational imagery I used, the audience is not going to sit there and decipher it, it may look pretty but this is not beneficial to the campaign.
Also considering the final visual piece it feels very static and flat with its movement, I believe adding some camera movements will have added depth to the piece and helped in developing the storyline. However this is a limit I have met due to the technology I have here in my home, since Uni is not open this is all I am able to use. I can learn to work with this and animate my own camera movements frame by frame, but this is time consuming and not as pristine as it could be with a software that I can use to change the camera angles. This issue I have had with time management is also something that I have noticed in my entire work process over the period of this project. The way I work takes up a lot of time as I spend days and days animating and doing nothing else since how I do it takes so long, this then leaves gaps in other parts of the projects such as the developmental side. Therefore I lose out on clarity and important things which need to be included in the animation since I rush everything else on the project in order to get the animated work. Therefore it lacks refinement which has become evident whilst I have been evaluating the piece, I need to learn to not neglect parts of the project since these gaps on the final outcome really stand out.