During the first seven units of this course, I have learned that I respond much better to projects that include fine art, new and engaging software, and the opportunity to research meaning and plot. For example, I greatly enjoyed the virtual reality project not only because it allowed me to look into new and exciting software (i.e., Blender and Unreal Engine), but also because it had a lot of room for creative interpretation and storyline development. Furthermore, I enjoyed the 3D animation module because I was able to do research into animation techniques (which I am personally interested in) and because I was able to express a plot and character using my own creativity. Because of this interest, I definitely feel like those projects were my best executed, and I learned a lot more about the things I would like to pursue in my later career. Because of these factors, my final major project will be similar to these past projects in themes, skills, and values.
The base idea that I have for my final major project consists of an animated music video. This video will hopefully contain both 3D and 2D animation, if not in the final project, then definitely in the concepts and techniques. I would like to be able to research animation techniques, other music videos that are similar in style, as well as things such as target demographics, fine art techniques, and colour theory. I will do research specifically into Blender for the 3D aspects of my animation and a variety of different 2D animation software and techniques in order to make an educated choice on how to go about animating the 2D portions of my final video. I would like to research and develop potential songs to use as a base for my music video and look deeply into the lyrical meaning in order to get inspiration for the music video. During my development and production, I will concept and design characters to go into my video, as well as do scripting and storyboarding. Hopefully, by the end of my 11 weeks on this project, I will have a fully animated 2-4 minute video that includes both 2D and 3D influences and techniques.
As far as evaluation goes, I will keep a weekly evaluative log of my progress as the project goes forward and will summarize my research, development, and production briefly as I finish those respective aspects. Then, of course, I will include my 1500-word official evaluation at the end of my project. I intend to, during my evaluations, state how much progress I have made, whether I have made any changes to my project since my previous evaluation, and how on track I am according to my production schedule.