Major - Submission - Graduate Film: Little Monster - Reflective Statement

Reflective Statement:

After over a year of working on my graduate film I can now say that I have finished it and that I have also finished university. It is very strange to say as I have spent three years of my life working closely with friends and lecturers on animation and to now say that it has all come to an end is slightly daunting. Three years has flown by and although I have found some parts of university hard, I can say that I have enjoyed every minute of it. From learning new things, to meeting new and very talented people, this has all allowed for me to blossom as an artist and see who I am as an individual. A lot of hard work and time has gone into my graduate film, 'Little Monster' and although it is about something very personal to me, my type one diabetes, I am hoping that by creating this animation a lot more people will become educated around the disease and help anybody that they know that may be struggling with it. I am proud to be able to say that I have created this animation and I am looking forward to how people will react to it when they watch it. I am happy that I have been able to create such a personal film and I have thoroughly enjoyed showing how I was able to create the story line, character and assets throughout my blog and art of document. 

I started this project at the beginning of 2019. I had a variety of different ideas and versions of the project before it came to how it is now. Each of the different ideas portrayed the same overall story line, about the day that I found out that I was type one diabetic, but they all took different approaches in how it was shown. One design was a cartoon version of me now and when I was five, another showing myself interacting with the diabetes monster, and the final one showing just the diabetes monster and me interacting with him from behind the camera. I chose this style of story telling in the end as it focused more on Diabetes rather than me and the diabetes. Throughout the film I have also made sure to incorporate emotion in the character to show how the disease can effect the diabetes monster (me). I felt that in doing this, I was able to allow the viewers to connect more with the character and almost feel sympathetic towards him.

During my time at UCA I have become very interested in the creation and texturing of assets and characters which sparked my interest in focusing on texture during my final project. During the creation of all of the assets, I used photographs as reference to ensure that they were modelled correctly and that they looked as realistic as possible. The photographs were then also used to reference texture, and if that was not as effective as I thought, I would then look at the smaller objects in person, such as the diabetic equipment, and base their texture on Autodesk Maya from that. I took a long time ensuring that the models looked correct and that the textures were as realistic as possible so that when the character was animated and able to interact with them, it looked as though he was a Plasticine character being animated within the real world. When it came to modelling my character, I did struggle with it. I found it hard to create the character that I had drawn in the reference images. When modelling the character on Autodesk Maya I found that I did have to change the sizing of different parts of him so that it would be easier to make the character move and interact with his surroundings. When creating the character, I struggled with rigging as I had not progressed far enough in the lesson tutorials last year to understand enough to then create the character rig by myself. After watching the rigging videos step-by-step and getting help from Alan with certain bits of the character that were different to the anatomically correct character that was shown, Diabetes was ready to be textured. Before rigging the character I had experimented with different textures that could be placed on the character's mesh in order to change the sugar crystals that are shown all over his skin when his blood glucose levels change. I looked at manually changing the character's texture as well as creating a control to change the texture while animating but I believed that the control would work more effectively. I also created a control for the gauge on the front of the character so that when the character's glucose levels went high, or low, it changed accordingly.

Towards the end of my project I felt as though I began to struggle more with both animating the character, due to his lack of movement, and the added issue of COVID-19. COVID-19 has made it harder to focus on work due to the frequent news updates, understanding that it is a greater risk to diabetics and it has caused for us to get help from lecturers from a distance. This has brought some advantages, as we have been able to contact our lecturers at any time and receive feedback either the same or following day. It has also meant that we have had the same level of feedback and help from our lecturers, using programs such as Basecamp and Zoom, meaning that we have been able to screen share and show any issue that we encounter more easily. On the other hand, the disadvantages are that some lecturers are not as responsive as others, meaning that we have not got as much help as we could have probably got from being at university. I feel that I have successfully created a short animation but I do believe if I could have received quicker responses from certain lecturers, at different points within the animation process, it would have aided me in the part of computer animation arts that I feel that I struggle with the most. 

In conclusion, I feel sad that my time at university has come to an end in the way that it has. I was looking forward to being able to celebrate handing in my final film with my friends and then going on to graduation, but due to COVID-19 I will have to wait until next year to do that. I feel that I have learnt a lot over the last three years that I have studied Computer Animation Arts at UCA. Designing characters, assets and sets and then turning those designs into 3D models on Autodesk Maya has always fascinated me, and still does. I am happy to say that I have successfully created a fully functioning and textured character, nineteen different textured assets, a short animated film, an art of, multiple turnarounds and rendered shots. I am amazed with what I have created and achieved and I feel very happy knowing that I have created something that is so personal to me and that will hopefully be enjoyed by a variety of different people when they are able to watch the final, rendered version of my film. I would like to thank all of the lecturers that have helped me and my fellow students over the last three years as you have all helped to shape us into the creative people that we are today.

I am now looking at applying for internships at different studios when they are able to take on interns again once COVID-19 rules have been relaxed, so that I am able to go into the world of computer animation. I believe that starting as an intern will be better for me as I feel more comfortable re-learning things to ensure that I know how to do them correctly. My overall goal is to become a texture artist but only time will tell. I am looking forward to my future in computer animation and I can not wait to experience the new world of work that I am entering. Thank you to everybody that has helped and encouraged me.