Method in the Madness

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Colour Shades
The colours were chosen:
 - based on an overall 'feel' to the piece
 - keeping the audience in mind (5-15 year old kids and their parents)
 - using the existing flavours of millions to keep it relevant to the product
 - keeping a limited palette for a reason! 


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Keep it Simple
Simple, bold characters and minimal but colourful backgrounds:
 - to keep the viewer engaged
 - enable us to use the animation principals of timing, anticipation, exaggeration, etc within this modern medium
 - simple can still be expressive and interesting
 - simple backgrounds wont distract or detract from what's going on
 - makes more sense to keep things simple and un-cluttered in a quick-fire succession of scenes

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Divide and Conquer


 - planning out the production pipeline
 - assigning roles, workload sharing
 - time planning
 - working with third parties (composers)

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Audience Communication

Making sure we are communicating effectively to our target audience via
 - having a defined audience target
 - feedback and communication sessions with sample groups of our audience (questionare etc)
 - Luke's final designs to work with

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Self-Evaluation


Working as a group with the advertisers and illustrators was not as daunting as I first thought it may be, communication was (mostly) swift and clear, and even when disagreements arose, they were dealt with easily and without any problems. 

The early brainstorming sessions were fun and all sort of ideas were thrown out there, and even though my original stop motion idea wasn’t chosen by the group, I could fully see their reasons not to and why we should progress with a piece in Flash.

The only major time of any confusion was when working with the composers and vocal elements of it (hence why they were incomplete for assessment). I was under the assumption, and though it would make more sense if the vocals were complete for us to then time the animation to. However, I soon realised this wasn’t going to happen in time, and so it was a case of completing the animation anyway, and hoping we can fit the vocals on afterwards, or have more work, re-working it.

Also, we we’re unsure as to add more scenes to the piece, as from estimating we thought it may run a little slowly, however, now seeing it in its final form, if we had added any more in, and kept the final length the same (30s), it would be going too past for it to make much sense, and would have worked better as stills. I think we were pleasantly surprised at how well the timing worked out.

I think asking our target audience (or samples thereof) was a wise move as it allowed us to get a handle on wether the designs and idea was hitting home the way we hoped it would be, and I think greatly contributed to the project as a whole.

To sum up, a good team and communication, with a some great designs off Luke, enabled me, as an animator, to really get my head into the workings of a styled advert and its colours and designs. I learnt a few new techniques and stylistic choices, and the importance of knowing your audience when producing a piece tailored towards them.


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About Richard Whillock

A beardy bloke who is pleased by the production of puppets and the set-up of stop-motion stuffs. A love for the scruffy, the textured and the original.

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