Stop Motion Animation Evaluation The genre of my animation is Funny Educational for children; this is exemplified through the cartoonish iconography such as simple shaped characters with cute toys like a little pig in a setting of an ‘elementary school’. The simplistic narrative with characters having short, simple dialogue mirrors popular cartoons such as Wallace and Grommet, however the aesthetical qualities to my animation lacks standards such as this popular animation has due to low budget. My entire questionnaire and online feedback linked from Facebook to weebly responses agreed with the animation to be about “education about bullying.” Also the majority of my focus group thought it was quite educational about bullying too. Over 90% of the audience in my questionnaire feedback responded that the style of my animation was very ‘Child Like’ and ‘Funny’ however some also said it was ‘Serious’. I gave the opportunity to also get qualitative data for some responses and those who said it was serious responded it’s a serious type of animation that reflects some of the “harsh realities in today’s society” which is bullying. A follow up question to asking why they thought this style suited it the most; majority agreed it was due to the simplistic content within the animation put in a humorous way. I personally think the jump cut edits of small transitions in one scene manages to create this simple, easy to follow animation, which was vital for my target audience aimed for any children up to 12. I have tried to base my cut out animation to target mainstreamers just like how Bagpuss has been created, by not adding anything that would be ‘abnormal’ or ‘freaky’ and ‘weird,’ something which ‘The secret adventures with Tom Thumb’ contains. The movement of the animation is smooth however very limited due to a 14 frames per second motion; similar to the way South Park’s characters move. I have kept the storyline brief and simple to understand as I think the brief storyline with limited movement fits in with the idea of a kid’s generated animation that’s easy to follow. Since I used flash, it was inevitable that high key lighting will be consistent throughout, this allowed me to work effectively and construct a 3 point narrative, opening up with a girl walking to school and dropping her item, a conflict of a bully demanding the item from a innocent boy who’s just picked up the item, and the resolution being the girl shouting at this bully for his degenerate behaviour. Adults, teenagers and children in my questionnaire all did respond that it was a very ‘simple and easy to follow’ animation, giving me quantitative data ranging from 8,9 and maximum 10 on how clear they managed to understand the narrative, 1 being not clear at all. Nevertheless a randomly chosen young boy in a younger year from my school in my focus group shouted unnecessary things such as: “not fluent” “very shaky” and had “nothing to do with bullying” even if Myself, and the other two focus group members agreed he was being stupid on purpose. This just epitomizes the type of feedback you receive varies upon who you ask, the other two voices in my focus group was random photography students which explains the more serious detailed answers in comparison to the little boy. I attempted to make it very clear who the protagonist and antagonist is in my cut out animation, through appropriate use of mise en scene facial expressions, making the antagonist look very angry; helping portray its sinister role in the animation. I have also used non diegetic sound effects and soundtracks with lip synched dialogue to enhance the feel of particular events which characters take action in, which helps portray their role in the animation. I have varied the type of camera shots to a range of
extreme long shots, close ups, long shots and mid shots to depict a very lively animation, one which would attract the eyes to my target audience; ensuring they do not get bored. However I attempted to make the cinematography more interesting by trying to add zoom’s and pans in flash, but this was incredibly difficult to master in the limited time I had to produce the cut out animation. From my online feedback and questionnaire feedback, majority of the audiences agreed that the animation had “A good range of camera shots to explain the narrative” and that the “synced” sound effects and speech complimented the animation. Ultimately my aim was to try and create a child’s cut out animation that would teach morality in a funny, original way. According to my focus group feedback and questionnaire feedback, 100% of the audience agreed it was indeed an “original” idea that they had not seen before in previous animations. If I had more time with a more advanced, possibly even 3D software, I would try and re create this narrative as I feel as if I could of done a lot more to intrigue whoever comes across this animation.