Animation Reflection Essay

After doing the stop frame animation project I found out a bunch of stuff about projects in general. Things like spreading out your time well, why it was good to have a partner, and how it was more difficult to get things in on time than I thought. I was really looking forward to this project because it didn’t seem extremely hard or time consuming and it just looked like it would be a lot of fun. This was the first major project of the year for this class, and I wasn’t really sure how it would turn out. So I’m going to tell you what I thought about it and some of the lessons I learned in the process of doing this project.

I thought that the hardest part was getting everything done by the due dates. I don’t think necessarily that the work was too much to ask but I don’t think my partner and I spaced our time reasonably. We didn’t realize that each scene would take about a day, and that loading the pictures would take so long. Also we didn’t realize how long the audio would take to do, and for the credits to be made. The thing that made us freak out the most, was when the last day came to have everything finished and we still needed to import two scenes, finish all of the audio, and all of the credits and scene changes, but Lacy wasn’t going to be there due to an ASB meeting. That was probably the last thing I wanted to hear, because it meant I had to finish the entire thing by myself. By the time the end of school came around I was nowhere near finished and we needed a whole other scene. So my partner and I faced more challenges than we had hoped for, but we still had some fun, too.

I think the most fun part was making the little clay people and shooting the scenes, even though I have to admit that got frustrating as well. I thought it was fun because we could make them look however we wanted to. Of course we had to make sure they fitted the looks of the actual explorer but we could decide whether he was wearing purple or red or maybe green that afternoon. It was also fun that we could do it with a partner. I don’t think I could have gotten the whole project done by myself. It would have definitely been more difficult to have it done by the due date without my partner. I liked spending time with my partner since she happened to be one of my best friends. Unfortunately, on the other hand, that made it harder for me to focus, but we both learned how we functioned under pressure, that’s for sure!

I think the most important thing I learned was how I have to spread out my schedule better. My partner and I kept coming short within the due dates, and we could never figure out why we were so behind. At first we thought that was because we would miss class due to volleyball games. The only thing about that is some of our other friends who played volleyball too weren’t as far behind as us. Each time a due date came up we would usually just have one of the scenes and the other was close to being finished. I think I learned that we were trying to do so well on each scene and we wanted each one to look perfect. Well, that method wasn’t working for us. Instead of trying really hard to make everything look the best out of the whole class, we should have just focused on getting things done in time. I’m not saying we should have made them sloppy or bad, but we could have taken less time on each little feature that really in the end wouldn’t improve our scene.

After completing the animation, my thoughts on 8th grade work changed. At the beginning of the year, I thought homework and projects would be hard, but midway through the quarter they seemed to not be that stressful. Once this project was over I would have to say my first thoughts on 8th grade might have been right on target. I knew juggling school, sports, friends, and family all at one time would be difficult, though I think I understand now what the rest of this class is going to be like. Now I know that I should space my time better, and think ahead about what I will need to have done by what dates.