This paget is to give all animation students in their final year at ECA an idea of how to plan and prepare for their final year projects. Most of this information is self-evident if you have been able to attend degree show exhibitions here at ECA in the past, the current pandemic means this isn’t viable for you all this year, so we have tried to capture some truths that have become apparent here at ECA over the years. Remember, most of you are doing this for the first time, your staff have done this many times before now. As always, this is advice that you are free to ignore to your own potential detriment, but in order to try and remove limitations to your decision making we suggest clear, common sense objectives that you should be able to have demonstrably achieved before we green light your final projects…
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What It CAN Be |
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It can be one film |
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It can be a group of smaller films |
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It can be a group project |
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It can be an individual project |
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It can be an adaptation (make sure you have permission to work with someone else’s IP) |
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It can be a commercial project for a client |
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It can be an installation |
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It can be a fiction |
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It can be personal |
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It can be a documentary |
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It can be narrative |
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It can be abstract |
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It can be a data visualisation |
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It can be a music video |
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It can be something that doesn’t happen on a traditional screen |
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It can be political |
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It can shock, challenge, provoke |
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It can be a synthesis of live action and animation |
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It can be a synthesis of performance and projection |
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PLEASE PLEASE Don’t Do These Things |
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If you’re making something site specific, for example an installation, or a 360’ projection then don’t do it without securing your venue location first. Otherwise you simply have no means of planning or testing. |
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If you are using technology or pieces of kit that are new or unfamiliar then please don’t wait until the very last minute to start verifying whether or not what you want to do can work. |
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Please don’t use this year to reinvent yourself, if you have never touched Stopframe before now then pinning all your hopes on it for your final year is very unwise. For Stopframe swap out any other method you are not demonstrably proficient in, for instance, final year is not the year to learn Maya from scratch. HOWEVER, if you can spend the summer trying out these new methods, and bring some evidence of your competency at the beginning of semester 1 then we might well be persuaded that your idea and method are viable. Again, using Maya as an example, you can download it for free from Autodesk with your student email, (Maya 2018 until you hear different from Mike), you can access hours of tutorial video free on LinkedIn Learning (previously known as Lynda.com). We would expect you to be coming back to us after the summer with some small films and tests to prove that you’re going to be safe to proceed. |
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DON’T forget your strengths, the final year is really about showing what you can do, the ways of animating that you are confident and fluent with. Your method does not have to be new to be excellent in terms of examination. |
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DON’T leave the scariest animation till last, do it as soon as you can. |
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DON’T forget to animate in Semester 1, we will want to see experiments and try outs. If you make this semester all about paper planning and preproduction without animating then your animation muscles will atrophy. The proof of your idea is in its moving. |
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DON’T use your dissertation as an excuse to avoid your animation. |
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DON’T use your animation as an excuse to avoid your dissertation. |
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DON’T waste your summer. We all need downtime, to recuperate, consolidate and reflect, but make sure you use some of this time to gather research and develop ideas for your dissertation and film. |
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DON’T finish your film and then go looking for a sound designer and composer, involve them as soon as you can. |
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DON’T be afraid to discuss your ideas before you invest time in implementing them. Remember that you will be assessed on your design processes rather than merely how “good” your films are. Discussion, iteration, testing are all part of these processes. |
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DON’T turn up without and idea to discuss on day 1 of semester 1. We will never force you to stick to that first concept if it evolves into something else, it’s a natural part of any creative process and it’s rare that an idea arrives fully formed. If you turn up with no idea of what you want to make and how you want to make it then you simply aren’t ready for your final year. |
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DON’T wait until the semester begins to talk over ideas with us, you know how to get hold of us all, use us!
Procedural Checklist This is
probably overkill, but it may be useful to ask yourself these questions to help
you evaluate the viability of your film proposal. You should be able to
complete this checklist before you consider making a pitch to staff or external
guests. Click on the image for a larger view.  |
