Final Evaluation

Part One:

1.       I am very satisfied with the final result of my e-pub, though there are some things that I would have liked to be a bit better, such as the director’s commentary. I would have liked to record more commentary over my scenes but they were not long enough. I wasn’t able to record a commentary over one or two of my scenes because they were extremely short, I possibly could have recorded commentary by itself, but there also wasn’t too much to write about these scenes because they were so short, so I wrote the commentary underneath the video in the book. I could also have written a bit more for a few of the scenes, but I am very happy with what I have written. Overall I am happy with what I have put in my e-pub and I am very satisfied with it.

2.       The e-pub took around the same amount of time as I originally thought, though I did work on recording all the director’s commentary at home, rather than at school, which helped with timing and also gave me a quiet environment to record in. I stayed on track and finished a bit quicker than I expected, because I did work at home. I completed the iBook a few days earlier because of the early due date, as the weekend before it was due, I had events on both days, so I wouldn’t have had time to complete the iBook, so I worked on it at home and got through the work quickly and I am very pleased with the amount of time it took.

3.       I would have liked to change the amount of commentary I recorded. Because my scenes were very short, I couldn’t say much over them. For a couple of my scenes, I couldn’t record anything over them because they were extremely short, so I wrote the commentary underneath the video. I am happy with the layout of my iBook, though I would have been happy with putting a background in if I had a bit more time to choose one, as I cannot think of what to put there. I am happy with how my videos are place, the images I put in and also the audio over my videos.

4.       If I could start the project again, I would put in a background that I liked, record more director’s commentary and write a bit more one a few of the scenes I didn’t do as well as I planned, but overall I am happy with what I have done in my final iBook.

Part Two:

1.       My e-pub and poster turned out the way I envisioned, though I did change the poster towards the end to make it better. The text on the poster didn’t turn out very well at the beginning, though after Mr. Andrews pointed this out and gave me some ideas, I fixed this. So the poster I started with was how I had envisioned it, though the poster that is in my iBook is much better and I am much happier with it. The layout of the book is definitely how I pictured it and I am extremely happy with how it turned out.

2.       The poster and e-pub clearly depict the style of my animation. The e-pub design shows the simplicity of the story line and animation. The poster contributes towards showing the style of the animation, showing that it is a stop motion style. The poster shows this because of the images used, they are real, as is iStop Motion. If my animation was created in animation-ish I would have created the poster to show this style, meaning I would have drawn the specific images in a program such as animation-ish and put them in my poster, rather than using real images, like I used in my poster. I edited the colour of my poster in photoshop to create a lighter tone to it, as it is a fairly happy story, rather than a sad or scary one. If this were the case, I would have made the colours a lot darker and more sinister. I didn’t use contrast in my poster, as it would’ve created a striking effect, which I did not need for my simple story. I also didn’t need anything to stand out except for the text, which isn’t much of a contrast to the rest of the poster. The lines in the poster are quite simple, again to match the storyline, though the lines in the lockers aren’t quite as simple as the lines of the stick figure. Overall, the poster and layout contribute greatly to depicting the style of my animation.

3.       I didn’t have too much trouble recording my director’s commentary and putting my iBook together. There were a few issues whilst recording my sound. At one stage, the sound echoed quite a bit and was extremely noticeable, so I deleted that recording and redid it much better. Also, a few times during the process, the sound didn’t turn out right and made a buzzing noise, making me again delete the sound and re-record it. I didn’t have much trouble creating the iBook, for I had done all the planning and just had to insert it all into the iBook. I had a bit of trouble exporting the iBook in the lesson it was due, as I had downloaded iBooks author onto my own laptop, so there was a different way to export it. I tried putting it onto a school computer to export, but it wouldn’t open, as my version of iBooks author was a more updated copy. Mr Andrews showed us how to export off our own computers and mine froze the first couple of times but eventually it worked and I was able to hand my iBook in. These are the only difficulties I had in the process of making my iBook, as I had everything prepared before I started completing it.

4.       I had to find/download a few new materials to be able to complete my e-pub. I had to find an image of lockers on flickr to complete my poster. I made sure it was copyright free and I was allowed to use it before I downloaded it. I believe the poster wouldn’t have looked as good if I had used an image of the school lockers. I also had to redraw my stick figure, as I no longer had him, and take a picture of him to use. In addition to this, I had to download iBooks author to my own laptop so I could work on the project at home.

5.       In the planning process, I wrote out what I was going to say and what I was going to write for my director’s commentary for every scene of my animation. I also wrote what I was going to write for the planning of my animation, the story line, and the music and deleted scenes. I wrote these in detail so I wouldn’t have any trouble with it later on in the process and I could just copy and paste the writing later on. Once the planning was complete, I went on to start my iBook. Firstly, I recorded all the director’s commentary over my scenes and exported them. I then completed my poster and began to place all of this into the iBook. To create my poster, I found an image of lockers on flickr and placed this in photoshop. I then masked my stick figure image I had taken and masked out all the excess paper that I did not need. I then placed him on top of the locker image and moved him to where I needed him. Once this was done, I put text on the image, with the title, a quote and the director’s name, which I then put drop shadows and outer glows on to make them stand out more. I then gave the stick figure a shadow to make it look slightly more realistic. To create my iBook, I firstly created a title page and added in my film to the intro media. Once this was done, I created a chapter dedicated to my director’s commentary and began to fill in the pages of the iBook. I also made a chapter dedicated to extras such as photoshopping, deleted scenes and planning.

6.       To plan, I used a word document and wrote down everything I needed to put in my iBook. This helped considerably when it came to completing the iBook, as all I needed to do was copy and past what I had written into iBooks author and it made the process a lot quicker and easier.

7.       I didn’t have any time management issues during this assignment. I stayed ahead of the task and worked on it at home so I wouldn’t fall behind or get too stressed for I had a lot of other assessment I needed to complete at the same time. If I had only completed the task in class, it would have taken a very long time and I wouldn’t have finished a few lessons early, which gave me the chance to go over the e-pub to check for mistakes and add more. Finishing early also gave me the opportunity to get a bit of criticism off Mr Andrews about my poster, which caused me to make the text stand out more, which made my poster look much better. I am very glad that I stayed ahead on this project, as I believe I wouldn’t have been able to finish as well as I have.

8.       I undertook quite a bit of reflection during this project. I placed all my planning up on my blog, which shows what I was working on in class. I also had a couple of posts about how my e-pub was going. I could have put more posts up on my blog, though I did not. I could have reflected in a lot more detail but my planning shows how much detail I had been putting into my iBook and how much work I had been doing in class. I believe I have enough reflections to support my work. I am happy with how many reflections I did, though I admit that I could have completed more.