In the first three weeks of production, the creator animated a Mario piece and began a Legend of Zelda animation. They also filmed scenes for their story but encountered issues exporting long video files from After Effects. In week 3, they edited footage and added effects in Premiere instead to avoid lengthy exports. They reflected that they should have planned their animations and paperwork better to save time and that some of their background designs were harsh on the eyes.

1. Stage 5
Production Reflections
Andrew Downes

2. Production reflections
• This proforma is to record how you worked on your production
• You should complete this each week during production
• Consider all relevant areas that you covered that week
• Think about what worked/what didn’t work/how you can improve
and actions for the following sessions/weeks

3. Process – week 1• In the first week I was animating my Mario animation
and I completed it with in the week however it was
awkward in the way that I had done it as I had started
the animation about halfway through the actual
animation so when I originally started it was when I had
the pipe and the goomba and then I had finished the
animation from that point and then I had to keep going
back from the other start points I made (such as the
bullet bill section all the way through to the
exclamation mark box and the mushroom start) to
actually get just about 31-32 seconds of animation to
have actually done this properly in a good amount of
time I should have actually started at the beginning and
I also should have done all the paper work a bit faster
so then I had more time to get on with the animation it
also doesn’t help that I had thought that I had lost my
memory stick and I was going to start work on all the
animation again which in the first place took me two
weeks to complete and so I thought I would be still
doing this into the FMP. Also I had a few issues with the
actual pixel art itself as I had to find the right
proportions to then create an animation with it and
also to make it look like it should at least be human
shaped it was a bit difficult to make my own little
avatar in a Mario-esque look and in the end I couldn’t
get the hair quite right so then I was taller just from the
hair and as for the head and body they were practically
the exact same size. The other thing I don’t like about
this specific animation is the fact at how it looks like
the most detailed part of the animation was the clouds
and yet I put way more work into the rest of it and I
also think that maybe I should have just made them
white rather than add shading to them.

4. Process – week 2 part 1
• In the second week I started the most
difficult part of the whole project to
me which is the filming which
originally I just took some walking and
jumping actions to put in with the
animation but then I thought that it
would take too long and then shied
away from that idea and so then I had
the filming done for the real life parts
of the story and then I also did a few
bits which I didn’t use for the
production which was supposed to be
a falling action but then I just instead
used an instant transition into the first
game and then when it came to
escaping the first game I had myself
crawling out of the darkness and then
having another instant transition into
the second game so there wasn’t
much I did inside the game universe
except for crawl in real life filming .

5. Process – week 2 part 2
• Also in the second week I started to create my
second piece of animation which was the legend of
zelda animation I started off on the first day of the
week by creating the walk cycles for my main
character in an Link style of pixel art and then on
the next two days Wednesday and Thursday I
created a map for the game to be played on and
also created some different doors and different
door locations and then on Friday Saturday and
Sunday I spent animating it, reskinning the
character as it still looked like a green elf and then I
also added some little details like keys and door
frames to the animation so I also had to fix a few of
the frames as the map usually consists of two
layers, the main thing that went wrong with this
animation was the size of the characters compared
to the map so I shrunk it down as much as I
possibly could and it was only just the right size to
fit into the doors however I also tried a different
style of Link but that ended up even larger than
about 1/5-1/6 of the map. I could have tried to
scale up the map but then it would look nothing
like the old versions of the game which is what I
was aiming for. Also thinking about it I think I
should have done single lines for the map and also
maybe I should have added a variety of colour to
the map as well.

6. Process – week 2 part 3
Also in week 3 I decided to start editing
some of the filming work which I had done
in after effects I was using keylight to edit
out the green background like you would
with an ultra key however then you could
also change the background colour with
this effect so I changed it to grey to try and
keep the texture of the carpet in doing so
but then when it came down to exporting
the video with the effects attached to it, it
took far too long to export some of the
shorter 3 second ones took about an hour
to export and then the 15 seconds ones
sometimes took 3-5 hours to export and
also when you look back at the stuff which
I had exported it was playing very slowly
and also at parts of the video it would just
randomly take breaks.

7. Process – week 3
• In week 3 I started to use Premiere to add
effects to the stuff I had filmed this way I
didn’t have to export stuff from three
different programs to make it also when I
did a test of exporting the project near
the end it didn’t take too long to export
compared to the after effects stuff but I
did lose the carpet like effect that I would
have got from the green screen also I had
to create a few plain backgrounds ( I really
don’t like most of them as they just seem
very harsh on the eyes to me) to draw
attention to the actions and the
movement of the character and also the
music as seems as the background isn’t
too important when it comes down to the
filming also if you wanted to know it was
supposed to be an astral plane sort of
scene but you are stuck in one of the
buildings with a laptop and decide to play
games that is pretty much the whole story
wrapped up. I have also used some
effects and masks to hide some of the
unwanted parts of the videos I also added
a colour gradient and a ball effect to some
parts of the video.
One
I don’t
Like
right