Time management

When we completed our project proposal all that time ago, we also had to complete a time management list to see where we hoped to be across the coming weeks.

Below is my original time management list:

And here is an annotated version of what actually happened. Blue means what I actually did according to my sketch book and blog and red is what I accessed. Green is talking about whether it took longer than expected- which almost everything did.

So, in the first week before the first of April I basically had a long think about what I as interested in and began making my pecha Kucha. In the second week I visited the JR and was actually ahead of schedule because I had done a load of work when I was there, however due to the amount of sketches that I’d done and because I’d really liked the fast rough style I had done them in, I got really carried away for the next two weeks just using photoshop to add colour to my drawings and spent a lot of time scanning stuff in ready to alter. I even made up my own hospital room from these drawings in adobe indesign but it did take ages as I had to edit every little bit.

This set me back by week our because, having had the crit with Neil the week before, I had already been asked by him what my animation would be on and I hadn’t had an answer. I began my research about two weeks late and produced three blog posts on illnesses I found interesting but knew I wouldn’t want to do for the final animation. I also had originally thought to make a character to narrate the animation and so I began making that too.

Week 5 provided me with sudden spur of creativity and ideas and by the end of this week I knew what I wanted to do my animation on and I had made some characters. I was completely back on track with my original time management plan.

However, everything takes longer than expected and I spent a very long length of time trying to make my character talk on an app called ‘animation’ but it just wasn’t going well. This set me back a week again.

By the 10th of may I had created and decided to get rid of the character idea, but I wanted to include him on the wall in a poster of my animation so that some of that work would actually feature. I had researched multiple children’s hospitals to inform my illustrations within the animation and got an idea of colour schemes. I had also tested out over four different apps for animation and had decided which would be the best to create my animation on.

By the 13th may I had a story board in my sketch book and was ready to make my animation which I began later than expected around the 18th of may and solidly worked on it everyday for about a week. The making of the animation took far longer than expected and I hadn’t realised that 12 frames per second were needed with only the slightest change in movement between them so that the animation was not jolty. Due to this, my animation was shorter than expected but did still fit in all that I wanetd it to, and it was finished far later than I wanted it to be.

Throughout weeks 7, 8 and 9 I had been thinking about where I could go and where I could present my work however I didn’t know where I was placed until later so I began putting up my work on thurday the 23rd, but I was not able to put up a TV until I the 28th of may and So I could not do anything until then except blog and reflect.

This spare time gave me to idea to visit the JR hospital again and to actually interview people about my work. This idea became what was the most useful thing I had done all FMP because I actually had real life opinions. This does not feature on my time management plan because it was a late idea.

My stuff was up on the 29th May. I was able to stick to my time management plan but, now, Ive learnt that you’ll never be able to stick to it whatever you do because you either hit some sort of barrier, in my case it was having to experiment with so many animation apps as I’ve never done anything like it, as well as you gain ideas that you want to do and that sets you behind too.

With me however, by the end, I was enjoying the work so much that I suddenly happened to work much much faster which enabled me to finish slightly earlier and to make a small maze book approach to a poster leaflet for children instead of a complex and wordy leaflet. Having this time at the end also enabled me to talk to a further group of people about my animation.