Conclusions
To conclude this report and the project overall I will discuss what the aims and objectives were and see how well I matched up with the implementation of the concepts. This will allow me to determine if I got what I intended to out of the project.
I aimed to bring to the surface the issues regarding self-censorship were and address them in a designed narrative. I aimed to get technically better at animations and at building websites. The objectives were to create an artefact that was easy to use and that anybody, creative or not, could pick up and get the idea of it.
I believe on all the above I did address them. More so technically, although, I wouldn’t judge my theory too harshly after my user testing. Before the project was even complete, the project was complimented for it’s narrative and storyline.
I learnt a lot about self-censorship that I didn’t know. I think having to deal with it in my life helped me understand it but reading up on it changed the way I perceived it. I used to think it was all negative but sometimes it could be for the better. However, as the narrative shows, it shouldn’t be for a reason that somebody is pressuring you in to. As stated in my contextual research, you can self-censor yourself to not hurt somebody else’s feelings, whether that may be about their beliefs or practices. I believe self-censorship can be carried out because if you didn’t in those situations, you are in turn not being positive to another persons path in life. They may lose that faith, belief or passion, which personally I believe is wrong.
Technically speaking I conclude that there is plenty left for me to learn about both animation and coding. Especially javascript, I found a neat little way to get around using javascript, however, if I could grasp that language with more time on my hands the artefact would be far more fluid.
I believe there must be more efficient programs out there to animate with but Adobe After Effects allows you to go frame by frame and create your vision perfectly if you desire to put that much time and effort into it. The change from Adobe Dreamweaver to Atom opened my eyes to the possibilities of applications being better elsewhere other than in the Adobe Master Collection (which includes Adobe Dreamweaver and After Effects)
I am happy with the final outcome, the middle stages were very rough in the changing of sing keyframes in After Effects, which make the program very precise but very time consuming to create anything visually appealing. My main issue was timing, after this was solved the aims and objectives of the video were met.
I mainly got through it okay regarding the programs used. I can’t complain compared to the rest of the artefacts issues. Though, this can only happen when you are confident in your technical ability, which I am on the Adobe programs.
The final artefact/website with the series of animations is now live at:
Collaboration – Adverts/Campaigns
This video highlights the racial adversity that Black and Asian people go though, this is an animation that shows two athletes who are of different skin colour to white competing against two white athletes. At the start of the race, they are held back by the problems they face because of their skin colour. It is shown that their skin colour is holding them back from making as much money as the white people.
This is an advert that shows a transformation in a white or coloured person inbetween talking about their stereotype, they are saying a phrase like or similar to “Would I still be considered as…” as they transition into another race, this is strong as it is very literal and in your face. The people are also asking the question from you, even if you don’t answer it out loud, you have an answer in your mind.
This is a strong campaign advert from a single man, who is speaking for the whole world, but relating it to himself as a black man. He is saying that he wasn’t coming out shouting I am a black man. He is saying the government has made us divide into groups because the labels they give us. He makes the comparison of the human body and a car, we are all the same but we are given this human body like a car and divided by it – you would never get segregated for your car so why would you for your body? LABELS.
Collaboration – Neutral
Speaking to Tony, it is apparent that I need to take on a more neutral opinion on the topic. There is plenty of theories that negate that opinion that I have that Islam is a peaceful religion. Doing this will allow me to still push the campaign but equally for both sides. This is really the idea of the campaign anyways so it makes sense to do so.
The programmes will have to be scrapped as they currently favour one side. If I had these programmes it would mean people could call upon us for completely the wrong reasons. This goes against the whole beliefs of the campaign.
I need to look into other ways equality has been brought in by other projects and campaigns and apply it to this project to get a good artefact out of it. I will take on board this feedback and speak with my collaborator about this.
Reflection
THE PROJECT AS A WHOLE
Reflecting back on my time making this artefact I must speak about my time management. I thought I had plent of time to complete this project. However, there was plenty I thought I knew about coding that just went completely wrong. I had to brush up on those skills and almost re-learn everything again. This set me back alot of days from my gantt chart.
From a point like that it is easy to give up and consider moving onto something easier like I’ve done before. This time though, I refused to be beaten by the program and code errors and I think that helped the project massively.
A lot of my time was wasted not knowing where my project was going. I knew what I wanted my project to do, I knew the theory behind it, but it had no technical and aesthetic vision to it for months. Stepping away from my laptop screen was the best move I made. In doing this I was able to get back to basics. Pull out a pencil and my sketchbook that I spent enough money on, and get the creative juices flowing. The brainstorms, website flowcharts and storyboards came out so easily from here and allowed me to claw back that massive chunk of time that I had wasted staring at my screen.
THEORY
The theory behind my project was already discovered last year in my first attempt at making something for a self-censorship piece.
I approached the artefact differently this time as I dug deeper into the psychology of the issues regarding self-censorship, this allowed me to easily (once I got away from the computer screen) draw up narratives to portray the act of self-censorship and also how you can get away from it.
It is explained what self-censorship is and what it does to you throughout the project. Even if you pick all the positive decisions in decision making pages you will always come back and say “what if I chose to give up”. That was done by always allowing the user to go back on the decision they had just made or even jumping right back to the beginning to make a different way around the website.
DESIGN – ANIMATION
Even though I enjoyed designing all the animations, it was a tedious job as I had made so many of them. Going keyframe by keyframe on some of them was very tiring and I can see why animations are often made my teams of designers. The main struggles I came across were source files. It was handy to have them, but if I had accidently changed one or the other, it become another big task to change them back so the source file was still intact for that animation. This lead me to make duplicates of so many files just to have a different version of them in different scenes.
TECHNICAL – WEBSITE
Yes this website did test me, yes I struggled with the basics of coding even though I thought I had it pretty much perfect. There was a lot to note on either what I had forgotten about coding or what I had already known and been taught incorrectly elsewhere. Such as the incomplete tags that were easily pointed out by a friend of mine who knows a fair bit about websites.
Collaboration – Storyboard
LEFT TO RIGHT
In the first two screens I will have newspapers falling onto a desk/table/surface of some sort, then a close up into the headline story that is on all of them. The magnifying glass will allow me to show an obvious zoom into the paper.
Next to be shown, is the general publics opinion to those headlines, the general response is that they can actually believe that this is the truth because newspapers are supposedly a reliable source of news from around the world. The magnifying glass can reappear here to zoom in to the paper and show a different headline that the newsapaper could have written. I have written there for example “is actually ISIS kill 500 people” instead of what was already on the original paper shown before for example “Muslims kill 500 people”. I then explain how the newspaper has got it wrong and give a brief definition of the extremist culture and how they do not represent Islam.
After this I can have statistics or Infographics before I push the campaign.
The logo is animated into the next scene with a voiceover with what the campaign is all about. The mission statement is then shown and spoken out loud too, this allows me to lead onto the main programme that the campaign is offering. Explaining this while having the animation of what the desired effect will be on the world will bring that sense of result into the animation. It will display a campaign worker making his way to the newspaper company that has been complained about by someone to us. It will be shown that he got the result, the newspaper with the original bad headline will fade out and the new improved headlines will fade in.
Just before I end the video, I will explain that there are more personal programmes on the website or in our brochure that can aid them in the fight against racial & religious discrimination and a brighter tomorrow for all of mankind.
Lastly, will be the logo faded in then out after a short while so that the logo is more likely to be remembered.
Collaboration – Animation
To promote the campaign, me and my collaborator have decided to make a promotional and factual animation to explain our views and what we are trying to change.
Me and my collaborator discussed that we want to address and display certain things in this animation/informational video, such as:
- Newspaper headlines depicting race & religions incorrectly
- Facts about terrorism that negate the stereotype that terrorism is from a certain religion
- The way in which once the news title is read to how the news title is then talked about
- How our campaign works – our main offer to combat the above
- The future of the campaign
Collaboration -Animation Brainstorm
1 – 2 Minutes long just to keep it short and sweet, people can overlook and lose focus in the video if it is too long. I believe I can everything I have planned into that time.
The things that need to be addressed show the past current and possible future for this topic and problem I am trying to solve.
Red & Green colours to show positive and negative things within the video.
(eg. Red = stereotypes. Green = Change for the better)
Expecting the tone to be in your face as most campaigns are. They show you what is wrong and what they want from you to change the world for a better place.
Alvino Rodrigues - Digital Communication Design 