Progress Presentation 2 Feedback

Today I gave a presentation detailing the progress on my honours project. As I attended early I was the first to present, although only in front of two other classmates and lecturer David Lyons. I also listened in to a number of other following presentations and listened to the responses of those which was beneficial.

Presentation Content

My presentation slides can be downloaded to view through my Google Drive. In the presentation I explained where I was with my project during the first progress presentation, and how I came to my first structured research aim regarding the stylistic affordances of stop motion animation. I explained how I was currently focusing particularly on materials and movement in stop motion animation and how I am researching these through looking at other animators’ work and exploring these myself through practical tests.

I showed a collection of work from last semester and this semester demonstrating my tests with different materials so far. I explained how different materials can give different qualities of motion, and how different qualities of motion can evoke different effects, atmospheres and themes.

Finally I explained my current situation through my showing of scenes from my current story idea. I talked about different options for the ending and what I’d be doing to develop an ending to the story. I also talked about my schedule and how I plan to begin animating the final story very soon.

Feedback

Feedback to my work was positive and those in attendance didn’t have any concerns about the scope, content or direction of my project. I believe I did a good job covering all aspects of my project so there were no queries about what my project was about or what I was trying to achieve.

Again, my character animations that I did from Global Game Jam (which I also included in this presentation) were received well.

I was praised for doing multiple tests on different materials to explore the different characteristics that can be achieved. David Lyons also liked how my research aim was still loose and that by going through my final animation I can make conclusions as part of a “post project rationalism”.

I was also suggested to check out [insert name when I find out who it was] who has done work into visual-only performance that would be appropriate to consider since my character does not speak.

Other Presentations

I stayed around for another three hours listening and watching other classmates’ presentations. In addition to giving them my own feedback, I found the feedback they received from others to be beneficial myself. I was able to see what things people are looking for in a variety of projects, and if anyone had information missing, other people would ask for that information. From that, I was able to understand the successes of my own presentation.

I found the other animation projects to be the most interesting and I was curious to see the other aspects people are exploring in animation. There was a project focusing more on narrative and characterisation, and a project focusing on animation pipelines and character performance. From the feedback those presentations got, I came to the conclusion that my own animation-focused tests have been greatly beneficial on gaining a greater understanding for the scope and schedule of my final animations. The projects I mentioned hadn’t looked too much into the production of the final artifacts so were considered to be too large for the time we had left.

Afterthought

I felt more confident with this presentation compared to the last, probably because I was more prepared and had more work to show, in addition to having a greater idea of the direction I was aiming towards for the project. Because of my enthusiasm to present, I was first to present, and therefore not all classmates were there to watch my presentation and give feedback. With greater attendance I might have received more varied feedback. However the feedback I did receive was positive and gave me confidence that I was more or less on schedule and doing an adequate amount of work.