eval

CRITICAL EVALUATION
Audiences

Aaron Barefoot
Interactive Media Production 2009
I9008638
CHIRO - FLASH ANIMATION PIECE

My piece “Chiro” a tale of a young girl who finds herself in contact with a god of death ends up with getting more than she wished for, my production of this was very troubled as my idea constantly was changing to fit something more suitable each time. The idea began with her going on an adventure, but the amount of time put into each scene meant that doing this would be too time consuming, and so I had to simplify my idea to what it is now.

I feel its aesthetically a strong piece, I would of liked to have included more interaction, however I could not see a place where it would suit having more interaction so I left that aside. Flash gave me many problems, A lot of times I had to colour in areas with the brush which in turn broke my images up into 20-30 sections for a single images which if course made it very difficult to work with, I could not convert to symbol either as I’d loose ability to manipulate as much. Technical problems was what stood in my way with this program. Unfittingly I done my work scene by scene, each scene a new fla. file. When it came to putting them all onto one timeline many problems arose and I lost a lot of scenes through this, (these scenes will be in my project development) Flash would state “replace missing files” or not, either way my files seem to get lost even though on the original file they worked fine. This was a major hindrance to my work.

I feel that it makes up for it however in its visuals, I employed a lot of filters etc to give depth to the image instead of the traditionally over simplified look of flash animations. I would of liked to have produced a stronger storyline, and had the use of voice actors to give much more of a viewing experience to my piece.

The story, being simple, I feel speaks for itself and the viewer can gather what happens in the piece and can hopefully relate to the character and feel sympathy for Chiro during the piece. It contains some glitches I noticed after I had finished, some brush dots that I couldn’t remove without starting the whole piece again. Flash is a fairly difficult program for me to use as it’s very particular about what can and can’t be done. I’d like to feel however overall my animation is fairly strong and is hopefully different to what is usually produced on flash and has more of a vibrancy to itself. If I could start again I would simplify the story and make sure I work only on one timeline as again, it caused me much trouble in finishing the piece. Also I would make sure the paint bucket detects the shapes so I wouldn’t have to paint by brush which was very counterproductive to my piece. Overall however I feel it came out well and I learnt a lot about using Flash.