Intro

To start this off, I have to admit that when doing this assignment, I have had doubts over the assignment and my group because of the teams I’ve been set up with and my lack of interest in the logistics of business and money management. If I was to start up a company, I would always partner up with someone else who’s more left-brained than me, but I would need to network with the least busy person. So as someone more right-brained, I made and edited the video, made the logo for us to use and tried my best to clean up the document in a lot of areas because they have been copied and pasted from Word without a coherent font size or working bullet points. But more on that later.

What went well?

I would say that if there is anything I am happy with more than anything, it would have to be the way the video came out. Of course, the acting leaves much to be desired with most of us being stiff, my hand shakes like hell when recording and my script has been altered a bit and shortened to help with a lot of the people to handle, but I think it is the best thing I’ve done in a couple days and I have enjoyed making the video (Which is saying a lot since I’ve had no fun making anything else in this module)

 

I suppose that the next thing I’d say is positive is that we did manage to release the project, Possibly in time. It was a whole mess of having to redo a lot of factors but at the end of the day, I did manage to get something finished for the assignment that qualifies as a business plan.

What went wrong?

I would say that what went wrong with the team is the people in it, including me. I’ll be going through each of us in separate paragraphs.

 

Starting with me, I had a really bad temper that got worse the longer this project went on. I recall having 2 outbursts. One when we were planning a week before recording where Braulio was out of the country, and the other on campus when I found out that Braulio messed up a whole section. With the former, I got angry at Braulio when he was out in Angola, and he didn’t do much with bad internet. I had a hard time believing him since he typed to us on WhatsApp and I snapped at him by throwing my notes to the ground. My 2nd outburst was when I found out that on Friday (2 days till submission) Braulio had written the wrong comparisons. We were meant to compare other outsourcing companies with each other, but he compared Maya with other irrelevant companies that have no relations to Maya or our own company. I was not only angry at Braulio for missing the point, but angry at myself for not noticing the changes. I then snapped again and kicked the chairs and tables, almost knocking off the monitors.

 

Andrew’s problem isn’t an emotional one, but he is slow when trying to ask something in person. I try to hurry him up or finish his sentence when I know what he’s trying to say. What I also notice is that he’s very easily distracted when we were working on the document on Friday and started turning around and yelling at the other groups. Additionally, he seems to try to do things the most painfully slow way, like instead of logging into Discord on the web to get the link to our document, he goes on his phone, clicks on Discord, clicks the link, copies it, sends it to his Uni email and clicks on the email on the web. When he was looking for the link, Braulio was already on the document. I’m almost convinced he’s trying to wind me up. What took the biscuit was on the last day when he wasn’t active during the submission. I panicked, asking him if he’s going to respond or not, and he said he’s doing Assad’s work (Which was Sound and Action) and then never replies to my Discord messages asking if I can help or suggesting an extension as a last resort since he didn’t confirm he’s finished with the work. We were given extra time when Blackboard was offline for hours, but in a panic when Blackboard reopened, I submitted my work swiftly out of sheer panic with one section unfinished.

 

Braulio was the one I was the unhappiest with. He seems to be the busiest man in Uni, from probation jobs, shopping, to not even being in the country. Because of this, we were always 1 man short or he never gets updated on what we say. This also extends to his attendance to Uni when we’re meant to see each other to ask questions to our lecturer or. Worst case scenario, he was 3 hours and 40 minutes late to our recording session for the Video pitch. I had too many questions in my head when that happened. I should’ve just recorded without him and made a joke about him not being here. He doesn’t respond a lot either to tell us when something finished or if he’s stuck, and he always says he’s at work or somewhere else. He doesn’t even write on our shared document and instead writes on a separate Word document and pastes everything without changing fonts or adding proper bullet points. Because Word and Google docs are different programs, none of the bullet points worked. Then he complains that I didn’t review anything, as if he has an allergy to typing on the document. Then of course I had to correct the size and make the bullet points work. And finally, there was the pre-mentioned mistake at comparing companies that had to be ironed out. Thankfully, it was all done in a day, but it still didn’t help my soiled opinions on him. 

Even better if…

To start off on the same order as before, I would have to talk about how I should’ve gone about things. I think my temper has been something that needed to be ironed out, and I need to sort out a lot of the factors that make me angry like lack of sleep and sheer bitterness for some people. But I was concerned that I would fail and that was my way of telling everyone that they need to finish this for the sake of our marks. Instead, I should definitely approach that message differently and calmly, no matter how many times I hear the same excuses. I would also have helped Andrew in the work, but he told me he’d do it himself, so hey-ho.

 

I would also say that Andrew should stay focused on the work, especially when it was his idea to focus on the document for the entire 8 hour time we’ve had on campus on Friday. His speech is also something that he has to improve on since it’s not helpful for when I was recording him for the video or when we needed to ask a question quickly. One final thing to say is that he should stay in contact during the final days to make sure everything is finished. 

 

Braulio has a lot of things he needs to improve on like attendance, understanding what he needs to do or asking a lot more questions. Also, writing on our document would be better than writing it elsewhere with no consistent size and throwing it in. But knowing him from my last group with him, I doubt that he’ll be improving.

My Career - Game Animator

In this part, I guess I’m supposed to talk about what career I’d like to go for. So I’ll definitely sound more positive here.

 

I would say that the reason I wanted to go for game animation is because I wanted to tell stories visually, but I also like to make games and have it be an interactable story, so the 2 dreams kind of merged together. That, and my Mum forced a hobby into a career. If it wasn’t for her, I’d be a builder. Anyways, I had a lot of inspirations that I got from watching Youtube and movies. I’ve been very intrigued by Garry’s Mod and Source Filmmaker machinima animations from old creators like DasBoSchitt, Kitty0706 and Winglet. Movies also gave me inspiration and interest, especially ones on DVDs that showed me behind the scenes of how they make models and the different steps of animations like Storyboards, Layouts and so on. I would say that despite not being in my field, I do also like seeing Stop Motion animation since it seems the easiest to do when you’re younger (Which I did do at points), examples of stop motion companies that I like are Ardman and Laika animations. And overall, I’ve been getting better marks on my work than other courses, without a single extension for my assignment in my Performance Animation course, so it might be something I’m good at and enjoy.

 

I would say that the pros to this is that it’s something that I enjoy and pass more better than other fields and I can expand this to other mediums such as video advertisements, shows and movies. I can make a name for myself in these types of jobs. Additionally, animators do get paid alright from what I’ve seen. At least someone who doesn’t waste a lot of money on expensive things and treats vouchers like water. But I’m that kind of person that spares their money unless it’s Christmas, Birthdays or bargains. I’m not sure what to say, other than it’s a great passion to animate; It’s up there with playing games and auctioneering. 

 

I would say that despite my love for animating, it’s a really gruelling and monotonous task. It takes a long time to make something good, and it can get repetitive with having to do things like facial animations. From my experience with the final assignment work, I wanted to stop because I got tired of doing the same copy + paste mouth movement per syllable. Another thing that would be bad for me is the time constraints for projects being tight. These things put me in a panic a lot of the time because I worry that what I make won’t be good enough or I need more time for it. I’d be stressed if it was a solo job, but when in proper group work, I don’t think I’ll worry less knowing I might have a decent and responsive team.

Conclusion

I would say that our group work wasn’t a smooth one, just like every other group work I’ve been in. I’ve definitely had the short end of the straw with partners, but I would say that it could’ve been worse. On one hand, I do act angry and not care about others feelings as I kick tables and tell my teammates to focus, but on the other hand, I do want what’s best for the things we make and get it finished. I just need a better way to convey it. But even if I try to be nice, it never sticks. Nothing goes through anyone until I raise my voice and try to make things clear in my way. I would say I’m in the wrong for not pulling my weight mostly, but if I can make an experimental game by myself in a group project, I tend to not believe them. Perhaps I need to find a middle ground between calm and serious, but like politics, it’s hard being in the middle. Oh, and I think I might be okay as an animator. It's a bit stressful, but I can pull it off.