Digital Storytelling - Module Overview [University]

In this project, I set about designing and planning to create an animation by focusing on the aspects of pre-production. I feel like I have learned a lot through my exploration of an idea and am generally happy with where my idea had gone by the end of the project.

The idea I went ahead with in this project, Gone For Milk, I think was a strong one and fit the brief for both this project and the Seven Stories brief. I was able to develop my work from a basic idea to a more developed story through group crits and being able to receive feedback from someone who works at Seven Stories directly, which was fantastic for letting me see where I could improve my work to fit the audience and messages I was trying to go for.

I would have liked to do a bit more exploratory research, or at least explore the research I did do in a bit more depth than I have currently, as I think looking deeper at other works or looking at a wider variety of inspiration, even outside of digital media, could have helped inform my work and the designs in interesting ways. However, what I have managed to achieve in this project was good and, evidently, the work that I did end up producing for Seven Stories at the time worked well, aside from some narrative adjustments I needed to make.

Unfortunately due to having to focus on the university project for more time than anticipated, I wasn't able to create the animation itself in time for the Seven Stories deadline. Although this would have been an absolutely fantastic opportunity to showcase my work in front of a large number of people, the university project itself was more of a priority than getting the animation done. Nevertheless, this means that I am able to spend more personal time on the story and the animation and finish it to a more professional standard since I can work on it in my own time. I can improve the storyboards and animatic and improve the shots used so that the final animation will be of a better standard and something that I'm proud of that I will be able to include in my showreel to show my skills.

From this project, I can take forward what I have learned from using pre-production methodologies and apply this to all of my future animation work. Since I will be creating a full animation on the next (final) year of my course, I can combine what I have learned within this project with what I learned during my Idea Generation project, as well as how to create fully-fleshed out and well-designed characters from the Character Design project and apply this to my work to ensure all stages of animation production are well thought out and developed. Since this is also my first time trying to create content specifically for a younger, child-based audience, it has been interesting and informative learning how to cater my work specifically for that target audience, as well as a fun and different challenge! I think the book How To Be A Children's Book Illustrator will come in especially handy should I ever look to create more work focused on a young target audience.

Overall, I am very happy with how the story I was creating for this project developed and what I have learned in terms of what goes into pre-production as well as how to cater for a specific (younger) audience, though I would have liked to finish this project ahead of time to give me enough opportunity to make the animation itself for the exhibition.

Mama Bear from Gone For Milk

Mama Bear (normal and alt. colours), Baby Bear and Mr. Badger

Initial storyboards for Gone For Milk before critical review from Seven Stories: