Introduction: The Project Brief

This unit builds directly on the Industry Exercises 1 and Industry Exercises 2 units, allowing students to use their portfolio of animation skills to develop finished broadcast animation pieces (in small teams) to be shown during Rave on Air, and to generate an individual show-reel to promote those skills to employers. Students also develop more advanced planning and organisational skills necessary to manage team productions.

This unit has the potential to allow inter-faculty collaboration through the use of animation to promote the work of other courses in the creation of animated advertisements for Rave on Air (product design for example). Intra-faculty collaboration is also possible through the use of other disciplines such as post production and sound design that naturally complement the animation industry. These collaborations will be negotiated on a per team basis.

Aims of the Unit

To enable students to initiate, plan, and complete complex team projects.
To enable students to work to broadcast standards of quality.
To provide experience of establishing and developing team project schedules and tracking progress towards project completion.
To enable students to demonstrate and promote the range and quality of their animation skills through the production of a show-reel.

The emphasis for this brief is upon fitness for broadcast purposes, if you read the learning outcomes and assessment criteria that follow this section then you will see that one of the main areas for your assessment is upon how well you meet technical parameters to enable your work to be broadcast.

You will be required to work in small teams, ideally, two, or three people per team.

You will be required to submit three pieces of work for assessment.

An individual reflective journal (Blog)
An individual interactive DVD showreel
A group film fit for broadcast

Journal
This should focus on your plans for this project, your brief, your project schedule, and your performance as a team member. These can be supplemented by a group journal to help communication with team members, but the primary concern is your individual reflective account. These should be hosted on Blogspot, or Wordpress and the URLs submitted to your tutor.

Showreel
Your showreel will take the form of a menu driven interactive DVD where users will be able to select which of your work they view. You will be expected to assemble a reel that demonstrates the breadth of your capability, and the diversity of your style as an animator. As such, you may use work from any point in your studies, or from outside your time at college. You may also consider generating new work this term to supplement perceived gaps in your portfolio. The main drivers for assessment here are NOT the quality of the individual pieces of work, but the way in which you choose to present them and to promote yourself…

Movie
This is where the majority of your effort will be directed for this project. You will have to choose a team first of all, ideally a small one of two or three individuals. Then you will have to negotiate a brief for your project. There are three main ways that you can fulfill this part of the brief, but all will depend upon you having a real client, and it is up to YOU to get information from your client to define your brief. This information should include a list of deliverable items, and a set of deadlines.

Way 1
Work as a junior on a BA film project.
Identify the film you want to work on, agree a role, agree deliverables, and then deliver them. It will not be possible to do much in the way of concept or modeling work for these films given the advanced state of their development, but it should be possible to do large amounts of UV mapping and texturing, lighting, rigging and animating.

Way 2
Work towards Rave Live.
This will involve you either working towards doing one of the six channel idents, in which case you will have to contact the graphics students responsible, or towards generating programme content in which case you will have to contact broadcast content creation students to find out their requirements. Be aware that work will need to be ready much in advance of May 19th, so it should be viable within a reduced time frame. Remember the panic that you had at the end of last term? That is a luxury that you do not have this term. It would probably be a good idea to attend all possible meetings about Rave Live, such as the one this Friday (26th) read your email, and look for posters…

The 3rd Way
Find an external client.
You may source a client for your project beyond the confines of college. The same conditions apply, you will negotiate a brief, and whatever work you produce must be produced in a form that is technically suitable for broadcast purposes. Other than that, the subject matter or content are entirely down to you and your client. This is possibly the most challenging of the three ways you can fulfill this project…