Pre-Production Skills

In our pre-production sessions, we were getting used to the software and how to use these
different efficient techniques for planning, mood boards, mind maps, story boards and
learning to develop ideas within a group. I have personally been successful through the
sessions by being able to use story boards to plan out a story and use it as a prompt during
my production as it drove me to achieve the goal I wanted to get to before the end of the
session. I wasn’t successful in using mind maps because I really don’t get along with using
them. I made a story board for my Santa Claymation and It was successful in helping us with
our animation as we had to do our animation over the course of two days, so we could
remember where we were up to and it would prompt us so we would be able to get to
where we wanted to be at the end of the session and so we were certain on what we
wanted our story to be.

Production Skills
In our production sessions we were using the different software’s, for example, Premiere
pro, Photoshop, and Adobe Flash, we first used cameras to film our first physical animation
that was Zoetropes & Thumatropes, this was an animation that was created by spinning a
little card on a rope quickly so it creates the illusion of it being one whole image as the card
moves too quickly for your eyes to process, I liked this as it was an easy way of creating a
really simple animation that anyone can do.
Another Physical animation that we did was Claymation which took
longer as we had to take loads of pictures and move the clay
characters as slowly as we could for the best looking animation as
there would be more pictures meaning that it would be smoother as it
would be less juddery as there is less of a jump between pictures. We
ran into some problems during our Claymation as we were working on
it the character was beginning to fall apart and stick to the page as our
hands were making the clay heat up, this then left smudges on the
paper but we worked around it by trying to make the movements as quick as possible and
trying not to touch the model for as long and the final results were good near to the end the
character just fell apart so we just went with it and made a funny ending.
We also did some digital animations for example a photoshop sunset, we were taught how
to make the sun slowly move down and make the sky develop a darker colour as the sun
descends behind the mountains, this was an easy task for me but the only problem that I
ran into was that one of my trees was floating in the front of the scene, I sorted this out by
going back and adding it back into the right layer that it was supposed to be in. Overall the
outcome looked good, but it didn’t last long, but I still uploaded it to my YouTube.
We were first introduced to cameras and we had no idea how to set them up, but the
teacher showed us how to connect all the necessary parts and then we were ready to use
the cameras.

Post-Production Skills
Our post-production skills are that we have learnt how to edit photos/Images using
Photoshop and we have also learnt how to edit videos using Premier Pro and we use them
to create photo shop images for game logos and posters in our lessons now, for my logo
editing in photoshop I can edit text to make it aesthetically pleasing so I can change the
shape of the text and I can make a shadow behind it and I can also create bevels making the
text look thicker or change the opacity to make it look faded away.

Soft Skills
I am personally a creative person when I take the time to sit and think about things I can get
some good ideas but sometimes I do struggle to be creative and I need to be given some
prompts, I like to play games so I get assisted creativity as a game creates a story for you.
When I am planning and organising I am usually organised, but I can get lazy and it depends
on how I’m feeling, if I am feeling down and not with it I will get unorganised and I won’t get
a lot of things done and on time.
I can work in a group well and I prefer to because sometimes when I can’t think of any ideas
to start off people in the group usually come up with good ideas then I can help them
improve on the ideas and then we get really good work done.
I’m not sure about if I would be able to lead a group but I can sometimes bring a group
together and come up with ideas and make up plans for a project, but I am not confident in
doing so.
My IT skills are not to the best of my ability, I can do some keyboard shortcuts for example
Ctrl + C is copy and Ctrl + V is paste but I am unable to touch type so I can’t type as quick as I
would like to and sometimes this makes me fall behind in class, as far as internet and
software knowledge I have a good understanding towards most features that a computer
has to offer.
As far as developing communication or developing Maths and English skills, I have improved
in communicating and I can speak without tripping myself up as much as I used to, my
English skills are good, but the only thing that I am improving is getting the grade 4 instead
of a 3 in both English Language and Literature.