Reflection on this term's work

 As this term is coming to an end, it is a good time for me to reflect on everything I have worked on in this module and the skills I have developed and all my thoughts about it all. 

This term I have been working extremely hard to finalize a project that I would be proud of and I would like it visually as well as its meaning and its purpose. I chose the theme called 'Purple Haze' because it is based on a color purple and colors are extremely important in animation. I personally think that the everything I create should look appealing to work well in an animation and color aspect on it is important. I also thought that it will be very interesting to research the color purple on many different grounds to get a very big picture of the meaning of the color so I could have created characters that fit those 'purple' features. 

My project objective was to create 6 characters based on the theme of Purple Haze. I personally think that I not only completed the project as I have signed it off, but I also have done a lot more to improve it and make it look better and show my progression route on my website well. For each of the character I have created an GIF that is showing some way of movement of the character. The GIFs were created as indicators for animators to portray how I see the movement of my characters. I think the GIFs add to the presentation of my work and they also helped me develop some skills. 

What I wanted to focus on more this term was research because last term I got a comment that research is my weakest area. This term I have researched the color purple on four different grounds: literature, religion, cultures and marketing to get a good idea of what I am actually creating. I have also researched artists: Ben Bocquelet, Ricky Nierva and Carl Greenblatt. I have researched a cartoon called 'Gravity Falls', a book called 'The Little Prince' and cartoon logos in general. I generally think that there is a great deal of research on my blog and it did inform my work and helped me develop abilities to work like professionals do. For example I looked at Nierva's way to base complex characters on simple geometric shapes. I am very proud of myself for looking so deeply in the subject and developing the ability to research and get inspirations from other artists. I think it was something very helpful for me and it made me a stronger character designer. 

I have used the abilities and ideas I got from researching when drawing my characters. I tried different ways of brainstorming ideas and not being intimidated by a blank sheet of paper. I created a lot of quick sketches of characters which made me realize of what my skills really are and how far I can push myself. I have realized that I have already developed a style I like working in, but it also made me realize I need to try doing some works where I force myself to draw in different styles to improve as an artist. I think this realization is going to help me in the near future when trying to do new things. I cannot lock myself in one box because the sooner I do that the harder it will be to leave the box. 

The biggest challenge for me was definitely creating the GIFs. I have never created GIFs before, therefore I was a little nervous about it. I did an experimentation post to get myself familiarized with the software and the general idea of creating GIFs. Creating GIFs is pretty much the same thing as animating, so I really enjoyed it because this is what I like to do. Animation is my passion, therefore I take a lot of pleasure in animating anything. Doing GIFs gave me the opportunities to think about the movement of the characters and it also made me traditionally animate an image. I have encountered a whole lot of obstacles and I have described them all in the GIF creating blog posts. Those GIFs are indicators of the movement and I think they came out very well, I am personally very pleased with them and with my work ethics. 

Along the images and the GIFs I have also expanded on creating the personality of each of the characters. I love imagining stories and characters, therefore it was a really fun experience for me to just sit down and think about what I liked as a child, what message I want to give to the children and who really are my characters. Creating a completely new world is something I love doing because I can let my imagination take over and just go with it. I think in this case I did my job very successfully and created a set of really interesting characters that are not only appealing but also have personalities the children would like. I went even a little step further and completed a concept of the cartoon and also placed it on my website. I think I generally completed a great deal of a really time-consuming work and this makes me very happy with myself because I can see what I am capable of doing and how much time I need for which stage. I am really proud of all the work I have created.

Looking back at all the work I did this term, I really think I developed my drawing skills, my research skills and my animating skills, so 3 types of skills that are crucial in my progression route. With every drawing and every short animation or a GIF, I develop as an artist and definitely this project helped me improve. I am still thinking whether I will use those characters for something in the future, maybe I am going to develop a bigger project with them since I have already put so much effort into this, but for now at least I know I am the one who gained from doing this project. All the work I have completed was time-consuming for me and needed a lot of attention from me. I think this term in general was very challenging for me in my private life and in my academic life. I think now when I look back I am so proud of myself for completing everything on time and working very hard to create things I am going to like.