During this morning when I had arrived to the centre, I was again early. Now that I've realised I come in earlier than expected as always recently, I am now able to work a tad more bit ahead and worked on improving my animation slightly on what I can see is faulty. However, when the starter begun we all watched a video the "Amazing Adam" showed us, which was about a contestant singing on X-Factor. We "evaluated" on the performance as judges - in other words meaning we reviewed the information (performance/singing) then bring it together to form a conclusion (our opinions with evidence to our statements and views). At the end, we all personally did not like the two singers; this was because the notes they sung were at a different pitch/tone than the original artist and that the audience they targeted was not us. This was a different approach as a starter and I found it unique where we were able to give our honest opinions. I recommend that this should be done more.
Afterwards, the "Amazing Adam" introduced us to the next task of the third assignment, which is to evaluate our animations overall by:
- Evaluating our time plan.
- Obtaining feedback from other people (e.g. Survey, questionnaire and peer review).
- Suggest any further improvements you could make to the graphics.
- Any differences in approach design/implementation you would make next time.
At first I was slightly unsure on what to do as each part had its own bullet points and I became confused. However, when other people asked him for help too I listened to their conversation as a method of re-explaining things, then I managed to understand the criteria and task. I immediately cracked on and created a new word document for this new task and within it, I firstly pasted the time plan we did previously where we have our time plan and review. Under the review box, I drew another box and evaluated each session within the three days of animating our animations. The main points I stuck to was:
- How well did I use my time? Was it effective or wasteful (consumed terribly)?
- Did I achieve my goals or did I not?
- What could I change next time for a better improvement and result?
With these three questions, I was able to produce a honest evaluation with my own opinions too. Of course, I backed it up with reasoning and evidence. This part took me a little longer than expected but I still thoroughly enjoyed it as I took my time and reflected after-all.
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| Time Plan Evaluation |
Next, I then needed to gather some form of feedback from other peers within the classroom. Many people did questionnaire's/survey using SurveyMonkey and had sent their flash file along with it in an email. However, a common issue was that the sound did not work. Learning from this bug or error, I changed my plan and created a table within the same document instead (similar to the one I did in U22 when I got peers to review my game) and listed six different questions. When done, I asked other peers politely (including my tutor as one person) to give me their peer review/evaluation to my animation banner alongside with improvements. Again, this was time consuming and could've been done easier if it was on SurveyMonkey but at heart I know that asking the person to type it on my computer themselves is a better and more honest way. This is because the answers can be longer and more in depth.
When I gathered all feedback necessary to fit and tick the second bullet point above, I created another column alongside of it and labelled it "suggested improvements". With this, I can use the opinions of others to overall conclude an improvement for myself and for the animation. This will tick the third bullet point. I found this a fun way as I get to have a one on one conversation with the peer regarding about the work. It could inspire them and their improvements inspires me and allows me to spot mistakes I could not foresee before. I enjoyed this task and I believe every unit where we produce content e.g. animations, games should have an evaluation task in them.
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| Peer Review Evaluation |
At the end of the day, I saved my work and got ready for the presentation with Tori, a lovely woman who came in to speak to us about portfolios and interviews. When it began at three o'clock or so, the presentation was identical to the one me and the "Amazing Adam" witnessed on NUA's open day. However, it was a beneficial refresher. What she did then is showed us a variety of different portfolio approaches, which we couldn't on the day as it was crowded. I came up with lots of questions and asked Tori regarding about it and as expected, she answered nicely. This has inspired me and given me a new goal to make my portfolio.
I can now envision what it will look like but I remain to lack a lot of skills and therefore will be working on them whenever for self growth. I have about a year to create this and I need to crack on.. I am just worried if I can develop skills to showcase it. From what I know so far, I am good at creative text/logo drawings and a bit of scenery (fiction, though). I will be polishing and developing new skills - so I thank the "Amazing Adam" and Tori for having this day as it opened my eyes further more. I will now proceed to work even harder.
