Creative Media Project
(Esmerelda: The Vengeful Vampire)
Embedded Files
Evaluation & Reflection
Gantt Chart Vs. Tracker
In my gantt chart, I kept it very much to a linear continuous plan of action and allowed myself to have at least one day a week of break so I could clear my mind and allow myself time to wind down. I blocked out this time in black as well as any time that I knew I wouldn't be able to do work, such as pre-booked holidays.
My tracker was something I would complete everyday at the end of my working day. I would fill in any activity I had done and how far in finishing the task was. I broke down my tasks into specific individual activities in this, as I find it easier for me, mentally, to work like this. The tracker also went through multiple revisions and changed along with my ideas to fit the track I was currently on.
Things out of my control caused for major delays in my kick-starting of the project. The first of which being ill with Covid-19 in the first week, where I had set out to do Context work. I was quite ill for a few days during this time but still tried to do some work, however, as no one else in the household tested positive, I was quarantining in my room. My bedroom has terrible wifi connection and as a result I struggled to actually start on the script, let alone actually starting the contextual video. I made-do with what I could and wrote out a plan for the video essay script with all the information I could add without a means of researching. After this, I was quite stressed about the week of work I had missed, however I feel I bounced back as well as I could and cracked on with work. At least, I did this for the two days I had before the next major delay.
The next delay I had was ending up in A and E and then in a ward for a few days. I did no work during this period because I was hooked up to an IV the entire time and I was both physically and mentally incapable. I admittedly did not bounce back from this traumatic event all that well and I think this is definitely reflected in the rest of the tracker and the disjointed way I went about the project. I sincerely hope nothing similar happens to me in the future, but in the case that it does, I think I will take a few days to mentally rejuvenate. This is so I can go into the project with a clear mind instead of throwing myself straight into the work, like I did with this project, and then having to process the events while also working. The reason I did this in this case is because I was very stressed about the fact I had now missed two weeks of work and I knew that I really needed to make a start.
Audience Feedback
I received lots of verbal feedback when showing the teaser trailer to multiple people; the most memorable of which being my two year old cousin who I showed the trailer to. She was very engaged by all the colours and said she liked it very much. She watches a lot of animations and particularly enjoys Studio Ghibli films at the moment, so although not directly in my target audience I thought it would be worth having an experiment and seeing how she responded to the piece. After we watched the trailer twice, I told her that I made it (as I specifically withheld this to see her reaction when I told her) and she was very surprised and impressed. I think this experience has been a testament to the professional level of the trailer as children can be very hard to engage, if they aren't interested they simply walk away or complain. Furthermore, this shows the flexibility of the piece as my cousin is very far from my teenage target market in age but she was stilled engaged by the piece, demonstrating that a wide range of people could become interested in the story from the trailer.
I created a google form in order to have recorded written feedback as opposed to simply having verbal feedback. Furthermore, this form is something physical and constant that I can refer back to in future as I continue to develop on top of this project.
I made this form quite in-depth and specifically referred to the grading matrix when making it so I could structure my questions around the criteria I am aiming for to get a distinction in this project. I shared the form with family members and a few friends via WhatsApp. Email worked very well for me as a means of sharing when I did the consumer research form, however I did not want such a broad scope of people for this form as I felt sticking to people who knew me and knew my working level would give me the most accurate and critical feedback.
I have included the summary of all the answers here and will refer to any relevant results in my below evaluations.
Audience Feedback Responses.pdfAudience Feedback: Responses
The Brief
I believe my final pieces were successful in meeting the brief we were given because I have identified a gap within the film and media market and built an idea that begins to fill in the gap, while also keeping the piece engaging visually and in terms of content. This is further solidified by my Audience Feedback.
60% of people felt my final concept completely fit the brief and the remaining 40% felt there was some slight room for improvement. I myself would have given myself and 8 or 9 on this scale as I believe things are 100% on the mark and there's always some level of improvements that one can do.
In terms of my over-arching message in this project, I would say it has been trying to raise awareness and also fill the gap in media of South-Asian representation. This also ties in with my target audience, who were primarily teenage youth and secondarily the South-Asian community. I believe I have reached this target audience and that my research, as well as drawing from personal experience, has done the identity justice within this fantasy context. I feel this definitely came across in my final product/s from a personal point of view, but also from the feedback I have received.
These are extracts from responses I had on the feedback form. They all show a reference to the South-Asian identity and comment on specific things I have done to include that identity into the story. For example, I dressed Esmerelda in a saree in the teaser trailer, which is a type of clothing popular in India and Pakistan. It is made up of a cropped top (choli) and long [often heavy with material] skirt and a decorative scarf (dupatta), which can be opaque or slightly sheer. I have called this here a saree because it is how I grew up calling this garment, however this should technically be called a lehenga. These garments are often confused with one another the difference is that the saree is a completely unstitched and is draped around the body as one entire piece, often with an underskirt for volume. The saree is a much older garment in our history than the lehenga, which is a bit more modern. There are also such things as half-sarees, which is made of two pieces the choli (cropped tight-fitting top) and a skirt [one that is draped around the waist with extra material that is draped around the body often coming up from one waist and draped over the opposite arm].
My secondary aim and purpose of the project was to publicise Esmerelda's story and to get people invested in it. I think I have gotten people invested in the story through my work, and responses from my audience feedback corroborate that, but I don't think I achieved the "publicise" aspect as much as I might've liked. I say this because the piece still mainly stayed within my circle of people and people who already consistently view my work on my YouTube channel. In future, I will consider allocating some research time to post-production and how publicization of a trailer [or generally any work I create] can be conducted to promote content outside of your first initial reach.
When I asked if the concept interested people, 100% of people said yes!
When asked if the trailer was imaginative, one person responded with 'yes' and went on to say they were 'definitely invested'.
I also asked people what things could have been improved about the trailer and 80% of responses mentioned wanting to know more about the plot, being interested in the story and wanting to see more scenes.
Cumulatively, I think this shows that, even from the short teaser I created, I successfully managed to create a small, but invested, pool of people as my audience.
Problem Solving
I think my biggest issue in this project was time. Due to the reasons I described earlier, I did struggle with churning out work at the time scale I had envisioned. I was also working in quite a disorganised manner during the research section, due to trying process and mentally heal from having been in an a and e ward. This then had a quite a significant knock-on effect on the production process. Making an animation takes a very long amount of time, particularly doing a hand-drawn, frame-by-frame animation that is at least a minute long. I could see that, at my current rate of working, I was not going to be able to complete the trailer as I had envisioned it in time for the deadline.
So, I adjusted my idea to something I felt that I could realistically achieve to a high level by the deadline. Instead of creating an entirely hand-drawn animation, I used a mixture of After Affects and Premiere Pro to animate the bulk of the work. I still demonstrated by ability in hand-drawn animation through the frame-by-frame animated title screen. I also cut down the trailer time by a lot, going from a minimum time of 1 minute to at least 20-30 seconds, in the end I managed to get to a sweet 45 second length teaser trailer. I cut down this time by cutting multiple scenes, in fact I cut out all but two scenes. One was the large-scale Esmerelda piece, which I kept because I had already done a lot of illustrating for it and it was a very striking scene, and the other was the title screen, which I kept because the trailers I researched all had some form of title screen and I could use it to still show some frame by frame animation.
However out of this another issue arose, the work I was now planning to complete felt to be too little and I didn't feel it reflected the time-scale we had for the project, which is a criteria mentioned in the brief.
Thinking back to my research, where I analysed Kevin Dart for his job role or animator and concept artist, I thought about creating concept art as accompanying pieces for the trailer. After some quick further research and thought, I decided I would be creating accompanying concept art that I would mount onto concept boards and then tie everything together in a pitch deck presentation which I would present as a recorded presentation. In the end I did not record the pitch deck presentation as, during my skills development research, I found that pitch deck's nowadays tend to be simply sent around via email for producers/directors to read when they have time in their busy schedule.
Overall, I think I dealt with this well as I thought of creative solutions about how I could create accompanying pieces and I was also flexible with myself and the project.
Context Evaluation
For context, I was required to create a professional written proposal for the project and a contextual video essay. The written proposal needed to presented as a formal document and clearly outline my rationale of how my experience over the course of the year has influenced my project concept. I also needed to outline my initial ideas and show evidence of project planning, such as a gantt chart and giving thought on how I will evaluate the project. I believe my proposal met the requirements and, when my mentor looked over it, they too agreed that it was thorough and professionally written. The project definitely evolved and changed from the project proposal quite a lot. I think I kept quite close to how I initially planned to evaluate in the proposal as I did create it on a google slides document and used procreate time-lapses, screenshots and illustrations to show my progress. However, I created a separate tracker as opposed to showing progress on my initial gantt chart so I could compare the progress and I also did not manage to keep a weekly summary of my progress. Going forward, I will definitely keep a weekly progress diary of some form as I feel it would help me to visualise the work I have completed, what I have to do and therefore how I can go about doing it.
For my context video, I needed to go more in depth about my concept, the purpose of the project, my inspirations and giving context to any genres or styles I was deriving the concept from. I believe my video was thorough and organised; giving a real sense to the initial ideas and inspirations by making direct references and providing visual examples. Since my piece is fantasy inspired, I gave an in-depth breakdown of the conventions of fantasy and also linked these back to how I planned to show these conventions in my own work. After showing my peers, they gave me feedback that the piece was extremely thorough and left them with all their questions answered. A few felt that the video was too long, however, another said that it was long but the length was justified by the amount of relevant content within the piece. In future, I may try to cut down the content where I can to make the piece a little more concise, but overall I think I conveyed relevant information about the project in an engaging manner.
In comparison to my initial ideas shown in context, the final piece feels a lot more three-dimensional and fleshed out and I think this is particularly due to the addition to the world-building concept work that I completed in addition to the trailer.
Research Evaluation
My initial ideas where inspired by the Netflix show 'Castlevania' and by my affinity for Studio Ghibli animations. As I continued with my research, more fantasy media helped me to develop my ideas such as the 'Lord of the Rings Trilogy' and Riot Games' 'Arcane'. I derived my inspirations from fantasy media because, my concept being a fantasy, it gave me a lot of insight into trends within the market and also the types of shows that become popular.
During my secondary research, I looked into three trailers that had similar concepts to the type of trailer I envisioned creating. These definitely influenced my final product, for example the 'Inception' trailer had a lot of bold text played between scenes, which I adapted to my final teaser trailer. I think the 'Arcane' teaser definitely influenced my work the most, and I this is corroborated through my audience feedback form.
After viewing both my teaser and the 'Arcane' teaser, 100% of respondents agreed that they could see the inspiration I took from the 'Arcane' trailer reflected in my final teaser.
I believe I effectively worked in my job role of animator and concept artist and that this is reflected in my final pieces. The final work is done to a professional level, which is corroborated within my audience feedback. When asked if the teaser trailer showed a use of complex skill and in depth knowledge, 100% of respondents said that it did. I also received a response specifically stating that the piece has a 'professional look'.
I did get some support throughout the project from peers, teachers and family through me asking for their opinions, for example on colours or overall look of the Esmerelda illustration. This support was a huge help to me as it provided me with instant and continuous feedback. This allowed to me to continually develop as I was creating the piece; as opposed to creating multiple revisions of the same illustration, which would have taken more time. I believe this support is still somewhat reflective of an industry experience because you would typically always have someone above you in the industry, whom to which you would continually refer back to to ensure the work is to the standard or vision that the want. For example, in my job role of animator, I would need to show my work to the director and make adjustments to what they felt could be improved as the production went along. Furthermore, working as a concept artist, I would need to work with the animation studio who hired me to create the vision they want.
There were a few people in particular over the course of this project whose work was a huge help to me. Kevin Dart, who I researched for job role analysis, was my main inspiration to create concept art as part of my practical when I needed to adjust my idea. Hayao Miyazaki, the co-founder of Studio Ghibli, has an amazing attention to detail within his work, which creates such depth to his world-building, and so I wanted to emulate that in my own work. I believe I did reflect this because I took a lot of my time and care into every aspect of the Esmerelda illustration, for example the hair was very detailed and I drew each strand individually to create a specific textured hair type common to people of South-Asian descent. Also, in my audience feedback, I received responses commenting on the high level of detail in my final pieces.
Furthermore, Miyazaki if often known to do a lot of in depth primary research [physically travelled to Europe when making Howl's Moving Castle] into architecture and so this inspired me to do primary architecture research of my own. The YouTuber, schnee, was also a great aid during this project as their video breakdowns of character types and arcs in 'Arcane' helped me to develop my own realistic, nuanced characters.
For my primary research, I created a consumer research form and analysed these responses through voiceovers. I also visited an exhibition, conducted and analysed a focus group, and travelled to a few locations to do primary analysis of architecture. My primary research further justified the purpose and confirmed my identification of the lack in South-Asian representation. The consumer research form in particular provided me with a lot of insight into current trends and I learnt a lot about my consumers; form what the content they enjoy the most to the most common ways they consume short-form media. The architecture research directly influenced my final piece as I built upon this initial research to create my final architecture mood-board [one aspect of my completed concept work].
For secondary research, I analysed a job role, evaluated similar works, observed and compiled art styles, and conducted in depth online-based research into the presentation of non-Western vampires through multiple articles and forums. I learnt a lot from my secondary research as I went into a lot of depth and was very thorough, researching multiple sides of an argument [in reference to the is twilight racist debate]. I particularly enjoyed learning and researching about the South-Asian vampire myths as these are things I never knew before and they provide so much more variety and depth to the topic of vampires as opposed to the same, recycled aristocratic vampire trope. My in depth research is reflected in my final pieces and this is supported by my audience feedback where 100% of people believed I displayed an 'in depth knowledge'. One person gave the supporting statement that "It is clear that a lot of research went into this work." and another said the work was "Well researched and articulated." Although I believe I did a lot of relevant and useful secondary research for the project, given more time, I would have loved to take a deep-dive into researching multiple clothing articles from South-Asia so I could have given Esmerelda a more interesting outfit in the teaser trailer.
In terms of planning and pre-production, I think I did well taking into account my circumstances however I think this is one area that definitely needs improvement going forward. When I changed the final concept, I created a final treatment in the pre-production section which was very useful for me as it was something I could refer back to and it is also a very clear, concise and informative document that informs you of the change to the project so one is more prepared for the final piece, as opposed to me continuing with the project and making no record of the change. My planning is an aspect I am going to work on in future as my lack of it did not help me and in fact possibly hindered me in getting work done in a smooth and orderly fashion. In order to make sure my planning and time management is better in future, I will continue to make a gantt chart at the beginning of a project, however I will also make multiple of revisions of it in the case there are delays. For example, if I were able to go back in time to do the project again, I would have made a revised gantt chart when I was discharged from hospital [and feeling better] instead of going straight into work while being panicked about time.
I believe my research was very strong in both primary and secondary research. I showed multiple forms of research such as quantitative and qualitative and presented my work in a variety of engaging ways. Planning is an aspect I am going to strive to improve on in future projects, but I do think the pre-production I did for this project was quite in depth and well rounded. Overall, I believe my final pieces reflect the deep amount of research that I completed, and this is 100% agreed upon in my audience feedback.
Practical Evaluation
I believe my product is very successful because I achieved my main goals as talked about earlier and my audience were all very interested in the plot and characters after viewing the final pieces. The pieces are very aesthetically aware, visually engaging and are all relevant to the main plot in some way so they together very well. I was worried initially that I would not have produced "enough" work for my final piece/s but I think the work I have produced is too a very high standard and is in fact quite a lot considering the time-scale I had to create it.
I think the most effective piece I created out of the three is definitely the pitch deck because it ties all the different pieces together as one and is a shareable, practical piece that is simultaneously informative and visually engaging. One aspect of this that could be improved is condensing down the synopsis as it goes on for three pages, although these aren't full pages and the writing is fairly large a producer glancing at this quickly may be put off by it.
If I were to make the project again, I would have loved to flesh out the character design aspect of the concept work some more. I did plan on making another board for this but I could sense time was closing in and so I prioritised the production of the teaser trailer over fleshing that out more. I don't regret this decision in hindsight as I think the teaser trailer definitely elevates my final pieces and demonstrates I have a wide range of skills from illustration, to animation, to video editing and sound.
AUDIENCE FEEDBACK: TEASER TRAILER
Three Things You Liked
Three Things That Could Be Improved
For feedback I asked people to state maximum three things they liked and three things that could have been improved in regards to the trailer. Overall, I think people liked the colour palette, character design and plot the most in the trailer. I agree that these were some of the strongest points in the teaser trailer.
The consensus of what could be improved was "more story!" with 80% of respondents saying they wanted to see more scenes. I think this show I definitely got people invested in the character and story just from this short teaser, which I see as a plus. However, I completely agree and I did want to include more scenes from the original script I devised, but time would have likely run out before I could complete it. Going forward, though, I plan to continually develop on this story and so sometime in the future I plan to re-make the trailer and will definitely keep in mind the request for more plot in the trailer.
AUDIENCE FEEDBACK: PITCH DECK
The pitch deck would be something that I would send to producers in order to interest them in the concept so that they might invest in it. Therefore, the main aim of this final piece was to be visually engaging and informative to ultimately entice a producer to invest in the animated concept. I did a small exercise in the audience feedback survey where I asked respondents to pick a number from 1 to 10, 1 being "not at all" and 10 being "completely", which should reflect how likely they would be to hypothetically invest in the concept.
Amazingly, all results were 7 or higher with one person even stating 10. This is a great sign for me as it reflects that people think the concept has a lot of potential. I would have personally put either 8 or 7 for this question purely because of the length of the synopsis, which some respondents also commented that they thought could have been shortened. When I was making the deck, I went through multiple revisions of the synopsis and the final product was the shortest I felt I could create at the time. In future, I will try to condense this further to create a solid synopsis that I can refer to and utilise whenever I need.
AUDIENCE FEEDBACK: CONCEPT WORK
The main aim of the concept work is to create a well-rounded image of the world and its history via world-building techniques. In my audience feedback, I asked how much of an understanding people felt they had around the concept from 1 to 10, 1 being "not at all" and 10 being "completely". 80% of respondents put 10 saying they completely understood the concept through the concept work, with the remaining 20% putting 9. I myself would have put 8 or 9 as I think there's definitely more that could have been done in character design and I personally know that I would have liked to make a 360° turnaround of Esmerelda.
Overall, I think my practical was very strong both aesthetically and in terms of the content. I feel the work sits very well within the fantasy genre as it complies with a lot of typical conventions that I went over in context, however it is also a unique story that [hopefully] wouldn't get washed away in the sea of re-done works. If I had genuine intentions, right now, to created the animated series, I would have distributed the pitch deck via email to producers' and director's assistants in the hopes that one asked for more information. In the case that one did, I would have sent the concept work over as well as the script for the original teaser trailer concept that I created. I would have had to research online for this in order to find out how to get in touch with producers and directors.
Progress and Learning
I would say three things I liked most about my project overall are:
South-Asian Representation: This is something that I feel I have lacked in western media during my upbringing. The media I had were very stereotypical shows that felt very much like "hey look at us we are asian" [e.g. BBC's Citizen Khan] rather than just a story with someone who looked like me. While I did enjoy watching those shows and they provided something for my family to bond over and relate to, constantly being see as this caricature can get very isolating. So, the fact I could provide something natural and familiar to the community without it feeling stereotypical feels like a huge achievement to me.
Very aesthetically presented: I am a very visual person and I also have a quite a jilted attention span, so if something is visually lacking to me I will really struggle to engage with it at all no matter how much I want to. If something entices me visually, I could spend hours pouring over it. The work I produced is very aesthetically aware in my opinion, particularly in colour palettes, and this made it so fun to actually make.
100% of respondents also believed that my piece was aesthetically aware and pleasing.
Content is very interesting e.g. storyline, world-building: In fantasy and sci-fi, I need to be completely immersed into the world so I can escape into it and appreciate every aspect of it. The more depth and nuances the story has, the more I fall in love with it. I suppose because I made the concept and it lives in my head I am pretty immersed in it anyways, but the concept art work I created definitely helped to further my immersion into the country of Perda. As I said before, I'm a very visual person so creating these tactile, visual references was very helpful for me to develop and flesh out my world-building. I think my research into character development in Arcane definitely helped me and this is reflected in the nuanced, layered storyline.
To improve my overall quality of work going forward, I will make sure to work in an organised manner and have a timeline that I stick to as much as possible. Furthermore, when I can see this isn't working and I am just too overwhelmed or struggling in general, I will make sure to give myself time for breaks or ask for assistance so that when I work I can be more productive.
To continue improving the work I have created on Esmerelda, I will continue to research and make multiple revisions of concept art as I have learnt from researching Kevin Dart that initial concept art can often be far from the look of the final product. I think I will also take the time to storyboard the script for the original trailer concept I had and convert it into an animatic, distribute this and see how it is received. I would then make revisions on the design of the trailer according to feedback and create a final animated trailer for her. I think if I were to do this I would use the trailer for the release announcement of the book rather than to just get general interest as I feel it might get picked up more.
Before this project, I never knew what a gantt chart was and I had never kept a consistent tracker for a project timeline. I have now learnt what these project management skills are and how to apply them.
I had also never knew what a pitch deck or concept board was, so I know have more industry knowledge in terms of design and I have learnt how to effectively apply them. I did know what concept was as I often like looking over the concept art for my favourite films, but I had never created any for my own pieces. Now that I have, I properly understand their importance within the project; rather than having previously viewing them as a cool art pieces, I now see them as the first building blocks to project progression.
I had not used the wave warp effect within After Effects previously and did not know its uses. I now have a solid understanding of how it works, the different wave types and the pinning feature are particularly useful.
If I had a do-over for the project, without the delays I had at the start, I would have stuck to my gantt chart as much as possible and been organised in my work, while also being kind to myself and managing my mental ability to do the work in the moment. I would have created the trailer that I scripted and hopefully had the opportunity to work with some of the voice actors that I initially cast.
Of course, this being said, I do not regret the final products I made at all. I am very happy with the teaser trailer I think it's a great starting point for me to build from and the concept art creation sparked further ideas within me for the world-building that I would not have without it. Furthermore, the pitch deck is an enormously useful piece for me to have. When I finish the book/s and want to start adapting them into animations, I can use the pitch deck I made here as an inspiration and reference for a revised version of it.
Overall Reflection and Next Steps
Going forward from this project, I am going to work on my time management skills and planning capabilities, but also work a lot on being kind to myself and to my mental health during larger-scale projects like this. I am going to continue to work on Esmerelda's story over the summer and plan out time to write the novel, with a timeline of finishing a final draft in one to two years.
I have learnt the lesson of how important organisation is in a project from this experience and it is something that wil definitely stick with me. I also developed my illustrative and animation skills over the course of the project, as there was a lot of experimenting and learning that needed to be done in order to get the teaser trailer to the final point that it is at. For the concept art, I also learned how to use a new traditional paint medium, gouache, and it is something I plan to invest in and practice over my summer break, because the opaque style of it is very in line with my own art style.
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