For my Final Major Project, I have produced a short animation on depersonalisation/derealisation disorder. The animation portrays a short narrative about a sufferer of the disorder, showing some of the symptoms they may experience through artistic imagery. As well as this short narrative structure, I have included some information about the disorder itself and links to where the viewer can access more information about it. The purpose of this short animation is to raise awareness of the very uncommonly known dissociative disorders, in order for sufferers to gain more support and treatment. If the video were to reach a larger audience, I feel the animation would be successful in fulfilling its purpose.
My target audience for this project was predominantly women between the ages of 18 and 50, which I decided when researching demographics of people who were involved in mental health charities/organisations. It was important that I looked at the demographic of people who were interested in the charity ‘Mind’, as this charity provides a lot of information on dissociative disorders. However, I used YouGov to look at the demographic of two other mental health organisations (‘Action Mental Health’ and the ‘Mental Health Foundation’). This confirmed that my target audience would be women between the ages 18 and 50, although I think the issues I am raising in my animation will also be relevant to men as depersonalisation/derealisation affects both men and women equally. In terms of social position, I targeted people in the ABC1 grade, i.e. middle class people, as these are the people most involved in mental health charities, and would be able to spread information about the disorder – especially due to their most common careers being in health and social care. My target audience is interested in British television, such as soap operas shown on the BBC and ITV. As well as this, they commonly watch shows such as ‘Paul O’Grady: For the Love of Dogs’ and ‘Emergency Animal Rescue’. This shows that, although they enjoy soap operas as a possible form of escapism, they are also interested in social causes.
My target audience are likely to be living busy lives, as they are middle class women of working ages. In order to meet their requirements, I needed to produce an animation which was short; not too time consuming; but gets the message across. The video I produced was under a minute, and very simplistic (it can even be watched without sound). This means my target audience can watch the video at any time, e.g. on public transport, during a lunch break, walking to work. In addition to this, the most commonly watched TV programmes by my target demographic are shown in the evening e.g. soap operas and documentaries.This means they are likely to be working all day and consuming digital media in the evening – a way to get my video across to my target audience would be to place the animation within the adverts between these evening TV programmes. I was able to target my middle class audience by using specific video-based social media platforms to upload the animation (YouTube and Vimeo). This is likely to reach middle class people as they have easy access to the internet, and are then able to share the video using other social media platforms. Within a full-time working person’s life, mental health is likely to be very important, therefore, addressing a mental health issue they may not know about will interest them and they may share this information to other full-time workers. I have used a female protagonist in my animation in order to appeal to my primarily female target audience. This creates a sense of empathy, though the video itself isn’t gender specific, ensuring that it is evident that the disorder can affect anyone.
Research greatly influenced my project, and I wouldn’t have been able to complete it without the extensive research I did on rotoscope animation and depersonalisation/derealisation disorder. I had never produced a rotoscope animation, nor had I worked with Adobe Animate, therefore, I had to do a lot of research into tutorials of how to use Animate to rotoscope. I attended the BFI Animation Camp in February, which helped develop some of the skills I used in my final major piece – for example, I learned about line boiling, which makes an animation look less static, as well as working with different frame rates. With this experience, along with the research I did on rotoscope animation, I was able to produce 5 different rotoscope animated scenes for my final video. As well as researching rotoscope animation, I made sure to do some research on depersonalisation/derealisation disorder so that my animation was well informed. While doing this, I found some common symptoms of the disorder, which I used when producing imagery. Visual research was important in this project, as I used a lot of videos and pictures for inspiration when creating my own imagery. For example, I found rotoscope animations to influence the line drawing style of my animation, and created a mood board of images I liked to inspire the sketches I used in my storyboard. Overall, the research aspect of this project was very important in influencing my creative decisions, and the project wouldn’t have been as successful without the information and visual inspiration I found.
I feel the project has gone well as, despite the fact that the end result is different to what I had planned, I am happy with the final video and feel it fulfils its purpose well. I created a short animation, using rotoscope animation, which highlights depersonalisation/derealisation disorder, and would inform the audience on this. I have completed my main aim of this project, therefore, I feel it was successful. I am most pleased with the way I quickly learned to use Adobe Animate to create a rotoscope animation, through small experiments and researching how to do this. Developing this skill was important as it meant I was able to create my own style, and experiment with new software to gain skills I can use in the future. In addition to this, the planning and research went very well in terms of what influenced my work visually and informatively. Due to some things not going as planned, I had to use my problem solving skills in order to come up with a solution and finish the project on time. To do this, I added some information cards to the video, which I talked about in my problem solving post. I am pleased with the way I handled this situation, and feel the information cards I created added to the video in a positive way, as they gave more information on what the animation itself was about.
Time planning was a problem within this project, and I was unable to stick to the time plan I had set myself. Initially, the planning and research was going according to plan, however, I was unable to film during the time I had allowed for filming (over half term). This meant I had to push back filming days by a couple weeks, leaving me less time for animation. As well as this, I had thought that I would complete at least 4 seconds of animation per day, however, once I started animating I noticed I was only able to complete about 2 seconds per day, meaning my production time would need to be doubled. Because of this, I was unable to complete all of the scenes for the animation, so I solved this by creating some animated text, which was less time consuming.
The production aspect of this project didn’t go to plan due to failing to plan successfully, and inconveniences such as having to push back filming dates. Though I am pleased with the animations I did make, I am slightly disappointed that I wasn’t able to complete more/all of the imagery I wanted to include. Although I don’t think I would have been able to complete all of the animated scenes within this time frame, as I may have been too ambitious, I could have improved the process by planning more effectively. I would have given myself less time for planning and more time for production, as I needed much more time for animation. As well as this, I would have tested before hand roughly how many seconds of animation I could complete in a day, in order to plan my time more accurately.
Overall, I have learned a lot throughout the process of this project. I have gained skills working with rotsocope animation in both Photoshop and Adobe Animate, especially learning how to use Adobe Animate after never using it beforehand. I developed my research skills, and was able to use this in order to inform my project. As well as this, I feel I improved when researching target audience, and this helped when aiming my animation towards a specific demographic. I learned that, in future, I need to plan my time more effectively in order to ensure I can complete the project on time. This means working out how much time I need for production more accurately, as I didn’t give myself enough time in this project. Despite this, it gave me a chance to work on my problem solving skills in order to save the project and complete the animated video on time. Altogether, I am pleased with the way I completed this project, however, I feel my time planning should have been a lot better.