Charlotte E Animation
Final Major Project
Week One - Three Evaluation:
19/01/26 - 08/02/26
At my current stage of the project I have completed my initial planning and begun my research into overgrown environments and environmental change in relation to renewal and decay. For these evaluations, I am going to reflect on my progress compared to my timetable, progress compared to my project proposal, areas I could improve based on my own and peer reflection and my next steps.
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At this time, I am in line with my timetable as I am in my researching phase and making good progress. I have looked at a mix of primary (my survey and photos) and secondary (overgrown locations and photography) sources which has been one of my goals on my project proposal, but I think I can expand on the types and amount of sources I explore even further. My next section of research is going to be about artwork and media that carries the themes that interested me from my research so far. I think in this phase I will be able to find a wider mix of mediums to analyse and I hope that will reflect my goal of using a variety of research sources. Besides my research work, this week I also started working on a research log for my Harvard references. I usually make an alphabetical list of references but I have found making this has helped me in my organisation and has let me reflect more on what I have learnt from my sources. I plan on putting my full pdf log on my website once my research phase is completed. Additionally, I have been making a daily action plan to give me direction for each day and keep me on track with my timetable. This has been very helpful so far, as I found breaking down my research into small goals and sections has allowed me to get things done quicker than I usually go with my research.
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I want to focus on feedback throughout my project so I asked my classmate Rhia and my tutor to read through my work so far. The main feedback I received from Rhia was to reformat a few confusing sentences and add some commas, but she also gave me an interesting idea for some future design work. She suggested I could maybe make a model of an abandoned building or something similar that takes from the visuals I liked in all the environments; I think this could be something fun to explore, especially with the focus I have had on the environment so far. My tutor suggested that I add more details about why I didn’t choose some of my other initial themes and a deeper analysis into each as well as making a moodboard about my proposed research sources. I have since gone back and made this moodboard as well as adding some extra points to my initial theme exploration, including some visual analysis.
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My next steps in the project are to continue my research on renewal and decay, maintain my referencing and keep making my daily action plans for the week ahead. Overall, I am happy with the progress I have made so far and want to continue in the same direction!
Week Four Evaluation:
09/02/26 - 15/02/26
Since last week, I have continued on my main research stage with my research on renewal, decay and change in different media, where I looked into the book Annihilation, music by The Crane Wives and different artworks across different movements such as romanticism and surrealism. I am going to evaluate in the same way as last week but due to timetable differences, this week I will self evaluate then have my peers or tutor look over all my work when I can see them next.
At this point I am still in line with my project timetable as I am working on my research but I didn’t get as much done this week as I would have liked since I was feeling ill and had to spread topics across multiple days instead of doing one each day like I would prefer. Although this week I did get to go on a trip with college to the Tate Modern so I now have some more primary images to work through in the week coming, which is great since one of my goals from my project proposal is to use a variety of research both primary and secondary. I still think I can push my research topics further in the coming weeks and now that I am moving on to look more specifically into apocalypse and the future I think I can find some interesting concepts and media to look into in order to expand my research scope before I think about my project direction more specifically. My research log and action plans have continued to be helpful in managing my time, but I was struggling to see if I had all my references on the list since I have been through a lot already, so I have numbered them now so I can check the amount that aligns with my overall list.
After rereading my work for my self evaluation, I think I want to add another research point to this section down the line as there isn’t as much as my previous sections, but in order to manage my time I want to see if I can get all my research I decide to do for my next topic done in this following week and then if I do, I will go back and look into another piece of artwork or media that explores change and decay.
My next step in my project is to continue with my main research - preferably getting more done this week - into the apocalypse and far future. My plan is to start with going over what the apocalypse is and how I think it could tie into renewal, decay and my other research. Overall, I am happy with this week's progress and think I will be able to catch up on what I need to in the coming week.
Week Five Evaluation:
16/02/26 - 22/02/26
This past week I have continued working on research, specifically focusing on ideas about how humans prepare for the future and potential end of the world. I was also able to go back and add my research on Princess Mononoke to my previous section, as I wished to in my last evaluation. This time I was also able to get some feedback from my tutor so I should have some more actions to take to improve.
I am still in line with my project timetable and now have one more week allocated to work on my main research section. I have been working by completing one to two of my research topics a day and have found this to be a really productive routine for me as I get to mark work as completed each day which has kept me motivated. My final planned research topics before going into conceptualising for my project are looking at a mix of apocalyptic fiction. In my project proposal I planned on researching the short comic ‘Gwend of the World’ and the animated series ‘Adventure Time’ as well as wanting to look into the origins of the genre, but I haven’t thought about it much more. Due to this I think I might ask my peers if they have any stand out media in the apocalypse genre to help me have some more ideas for both contextual and visual research. I have been managing my research log and daily plans successfully this week and I have also created an overall list of all my research topics so far so I can reflect on if anything else needs to be added or edited.
This week I had my tutor read through my work from this week and the previous as I self-evaluated then. His feedback was to go deeper into my visual research as I have mainly been focusing on contextual research like concepts and story. To achieve this, I am going to go back into my research and add paragraphs for visual analysis to the Crane Wives album art, Princess Mononoke style and generation ships artwork, as for all these I looked primarily at how they tie to renewal but not how they are stylised.
After these edits, I will continue my project work by working on my apocalypse fiction research. As I have said, I will start by working on the origins of the genre and then look into the examples from my project proposal before asking others for some examples. I am happy with my direction so far and will make sure to focus more on visuals in the research ahead.
Week Six Evaluation:
23/02/26 - 01/03/26
This past week was my final week of scheduled research, where I chose to look at apocalypse fiction. I researched the origins of apocalyptic fiction and literature, Adventure Time, Gwend of the World, the Horizon games and The Last of Us, which all provided me insight into different apocalyptic stories and tropes as well as mediums I could use for my project. I also went back and added more visual research to the sections I thought needed it as I said I would in my last evaluation.
I am in line with my project timetable as I wrapped up my main research portion this week, though I still plan to do any more research as needed when I am in my designing phase. I don’t think I was as productive this week as I had days where I didn’t have time to work but I still managed to get everything done that I wanted to. Something that helped in my daily scheduling was adding a weekend box that I used to note down what I needed to finish that I hadn’t done in the week, which I will continue to use as I need. Asking others for research suggestions was also really helpful as I was able to branch out more in my research, so I would like to include more ways to ask for opinions in my project going forward, especially after my audience analysis where I will see whose opinions I need the most. Since I am done with my main research portion, that means I am finishing up my research log, so I plan to include the final file of it in that section once I reach the end of my project.
After finishing my research, I was unsure if I had done a good amount and if it was varied enough, so I asked my tutor for feedback on that this week. He was happy with the amount I have done and found it to be varied enough as I have done a mix of digital and traditional, primary and secondary and contemporary and pre-contemporary. As I have said before, I am still very willing to do more research if I find I need to, or even expand more on certain areas of previous topics if I feel another area of it would be helpful.
My next steps are to enter my design phase, starting with idea generation. My plan here is to start with a couple of game concepts and make moodboards, a mini audience analysis and sketches for each of them to help me see what idea I am most drawn to. On the whole, I am excited to move on from my research into something new and start working on some artwork for my game.
Week Seven Evaluation:
02/03/26 - 08/03/26
Over the last week, I have moved into my design and idea generation phase where I began working on my game concept. This included three initial game ideas with audience analysis and initial sketches, narrative treatment sheet, game design document and audience analysis. Outside of my website work, I have also begun thinking about my end of year show and what I will need, so I have bought a business card stand that I can use there as I think making cards would be a good way to share my work.
I am making good pace with my project timetable, especially since at the start of the week I was worried I wouldn’t get all of the work I had planned for the week done, but I managed to have my baseline for my visual design completed. While I haven’t had the need for any new research yet, I have been trying to stay inspired by new things throughout by making mood boards and my narrative inspiration playlist. In regards to my narrative, I have already begun making changes from the initial draft that I made after working on my game design and audience analysis and I will continue to do so going forward. As I said in my project proposal, I want to make sure I am always reflecting and focusing on my journey rather than working towards a set outcome, so making narrative changes to better suit my theme and my goals is my main way of doing that right now. I am still thinking about what I want my final piece to be, but I am currently leaning towards an art book, game guide or small animation based on my focus on story and artwork.
For my feedback this week, instead of having my tutor read through everything at the end, I asked him to check on what I had done throughout each step then applied the feedback as I went. For my game design document, he suggested I add the accessibility section, where he pointed me towards an accessibility checklist, so I picked a few that felt the most relevant off of that and then he suggested I add some initial sketches of my items, so I drew a few quick coloured ones for things like the flower coins and friendship bracelets. For my audience analysis, I was told to link back to player profiles, so I chose to do this for every audience type instead of for the overall audiences like I had done in my previous projects.
Moving onto my next week, I am going to start with my character designs for the main cast. I want to make sure I focus on initial sketches as some of my previous feedback was to do more in that way, so I am thinking of making a digital sketchbook for each design where I include initial thoughts, thumbnails and final character designs. This is the part of the project I am most excited for, so I hope the motivation keeps me on track with my timetable and draws me to some experimentation.
Week Eight Evaluation:
09/03/26 - 15/03/26
During the past week, I have been working on character designs for the original three characters - Hanna, Yvonne and Esme. To do this, for each design I made a moodboard, several pages of initial sketches and development, then a transparent final design to display next to the rest of the work.
I am still in line with my timetable, having just finished my first week of concept art and designing, but I think I could work faster. I have lots of ideas when it comes to what I want to design for my game, and I am worried I won't be able to get them all done, so to help with this I have made a big list in a google document of all the elements I want to design before moving into my final piece. This list also includes which week I plan on finishing each part during. So far, I have mostly been focused on digital design, but making this list has helped me plan out some physical pieces such as a model and some painting. I have also been thinking about my final piece, and if I do go in the direction of an art book, these designs will be able to help me fill out the pages and show my project development.
In regards to feedback this week, I received my formative FMP feedback that goes over everything I have done in my project so far. Overall, everything is very positive with my strengths being in these weekly reflections, thoughtful research, purposeful concepts and helpful identified avenues of exploration. My area of improvement is in making sure the designs I am doing span a range of mediums and topics, which I have now already started managing by making my list. I will make sure I continue with this when it comes to actually making these pieces.
Going into the next week, my plan is to work on creature and enemy designs as well as designing Harlowe and starting to show my physical medium work. I plan on continuing with the slideshow design layout as that has been really helpful so far and I will also make sure I am working on my drawings at a faster pace.
Week Nine Evaluation:
16/03/26 - 22/03/26
This past week, I have worked on the designs for creatures and enemies in the world, a design for Harlowe in her human and plant forms, and my model of an overgrown body. I continued the same process with my designs as I did last week of mood board, initial sketches then final design with a transparent background.
I am in line with my time table and my document list of when to finish each design job, and since I have started working with other mediums I am also in line with one of my points on my project proposal, which was to focus on experimentation with my artwork. In regards to my final piece, over this week I have come to the decision that my main final piece will be an art book that explores the games artwork, characters and gameplay. I have begun lightly thinking about the layout and contents of the book, so have reclarified my to do list to make sure I include relevant drawings for the current idea I have. I enjoyed branching out and making my model this week, so I want to keep this variety in my work in the process before I focus on my final piece.
This week I have acted on my feedback from my formative FMP feedback and other points my tutor gave me throughout the week, mainly in the fact I have used some new mediums in my physical model and carried on with more designs. I think from now on, I will mostly be looking for feedback as I move into making my final piece as everything I am doing now is a lot of the same type of work.
Going into my next week, I want to focus on some environment design and full pieces of the characters either exploring or being in action within these environments. I am looking forward to this part less as I find drawing environments to be very slow for me and it ends up feeling very repetitive, but with my timetable and daily plans I should be able to work my way through it.
Week Ten Evaluation:
23/03/26 - 29/03/26
During the past week, I have been working on environment designs and illustrations for different areas in the game, as well as some set up for my end of year show. The environments I drew were a scene from the grove, the city in the distance, a shot in the city and the central star, then I decorated stands for business cards and my final book.
I am still in line with my timetable and my list of pre-production work to complete, and now I only have one more scheduled week to work on my designs before moving onto making my artbook and any other drawings I will need for that. I worked digitally for all of my pieces this week, so going into this next week I want to work on something else traditional before my time is taken up with making my book. For my upcoming UI and item designs, I am going to continue the style I used in my drawings for the characters and animals and potentially make screens to display them on.
I don’t have any explicit feedback this week, but have continued working on my designs as asked to by my formative feedback and now I have my designs more organised due to knowing my direction for my final piece. I have also decided since the next two weeks are going to be half term, that I will do one big evaluation after it is over instead of it split in two, since my schedule will be a bit more all over the place.
This next week, as I said I will be working on some more game design aspects like the UI and in-game items and abilities, which I am looking forward to as part of my feedback from my environment design project earlier this year was to look more into game design and not just visuals and narrative. I should also be able to use these designs in my final piece, so I am excited to find a way to display them in my book.
Week Eleven - Twelve Evaluation:
30/03/26 - 12/04/26
These past two weeks, I have been working on the end of my design section and the start of my final piece development. In the design section, I created my UI designs, game logo, item designs, print painting and business cards and for my final piece development so far, I have researched artbooks, made my front and inside covers, and two more double page illustrations.
I am in line with my timetable having just completed my first week of final piece development. I was a bit more scattered with my work over the break but I’m not too worried about that since having a break made me feel more motivated when I actually came back to doing work. In regards to matching my project proposal, I have used some more media experimentation and have done further research when I needed it. I have tried to make artwork that focuses on my theme of renewal, decay and growth with the double pages, such as focusing on the plants and changing landscapes, but I think I could focus more on my theme in the design and layout of my final piece. I have more plans for experimentation when it comes to making the actual book; my first step next week would be to make the note pages and I want to create them physically and scan them into print.
I haven’t asked for any feedback this week since I’m off, but next week I will ask my tutor for feedback on the contents of my book so far. I spoke to friends throughout the break asking for advice and that helped inform my choices, such as asking Emmy about how she made her book last year.
In the coming week, I am going to be working on my final piece by writing book drafts, formatting pages and making my physical note pages. Looking at what I have to do, I think I can finish or get close to finishing my book by the end of next week, but then I will still have five weeks until the project's due date and I don’t want to just submit early. My plan is to think about a piece or another final piece that would take me around four weeks to complete and covers an area of my project I haven’t explored as much yet. I will think about this throughout the week and decide if I finish my book with enough time.
Week Thirteen Evaluation:
13/04/26 - 19/04/26
Over the past week, I finished off my first final piece for my project. I did this by writing the draft, adding a few extra drawings and formatting and ordering the physical copy. While working on this, I have also decided that I am going to create a short animation as my other final piece.
At this point I am happy with where I am in regards to my timetable, as I still have about a month to work on my final piece and if I continue to manage my time well, I should be able to finish my animation soon. I ended up cutting the physical pages from my book, so to make up for this I want to try out some more experimentation over the next week before I get fully into animating, as to fulfill that goal from my project proposal. My plan is to start animating quite quickly, preferably next week, but I want to make sure I am fully informed about what I am making, so I want to start by doing some short research and reflecting on other animation I have done.
It has been a few weeks since I received any feedback from my tutor, so I asked him to check everything I have done so far. My main feedback was that I need to add some more physical experimentation, which I agree I need to focus on. My plan to deal with this is to go back to the end of the design section and add an extra physical technique, which I will decide on soon. To make sure my animation process is varied, I also plan on drawing my storyboards physically on individual cards.
This coming week, I am going to start my animation process by doing some research and reflection to inspire me, then come up with a few ideas before choosing one to progress on with. I want to have started animating by the end of the week, so I am going to try and do the initial work as quickly as possible.
Week Fourteen Evaluation:
20/04/26 - 27/04/26
This past week, I have begun working on my animation process. I have worked on some animation research, adapting my designs to be easier to animate, choosing my concept, storyboarding, pitching the animation and starting to actually animate. My physical book copy also arrived, so I went back and added photos of it to that section of my website.
I didn’t get as much done as I wanted to this week, I barely started animating and I actually wanted to get a good way into the first scene, but I did have a busy week so instead I need to try and catch up in the week coming. During week fifteen, I want to finish the sketch animation of my first scene and all if not most of the second one. I have decided to cut down my frame rate from 6fps to 8fps in the hopes to make it more manageable, but it may look more animatic like than animation, but I don't mind that too much after my ‘ANJAIL!’ research as I liked the low frame rate style. I also haven’t got to work on more physical development work like I planned to last week, so I need that to be done this coming week so I can put all of my focus into the animation.
I had my classmates look at my book and my pitch for my animation this week, and received positive feedback all around. My main feedback was that my storyboards could have been more detailed and I agreed, but especially now I am cutting down my animation, I think it will be alright and if I need to I can always go back and add more.
Next week, as I said I want to put all of my focus into animating. I want to get the sketch for the whole animation completed first before going in and adding line, colour and effects, so I want to finish the sketch for at least the first two scenes. I also want to work on one more physical piece this week, and my current thought is focusing on something to do with fashion or accessories, as I put a lot of focus on that in my character designs.
Week Fifteen Evaluation:
27/04/26 - 03/05/26
This week, I have worked on my sketch animation, where I have gotten half way through storyboard 2.1 in my initial plans, so about halfway overall. I also went back and did some of the fashion experimentation I mentioned earlier. I want to keep this evaluation short as there isn’t much to say other than the fact I have been animating, and at this point I just want to focus on that instead of extra writing since I am getting a bit worried about deadlines.
I am on track in that if I stay focused I should get all my animation done in time, but I am struggling a bit with motivation now it's right at the end of the project, especially with my animation frustrating me. I am going to make a day by day plan for the next week so that I get all of the sketch animation done by Thursday at the latest, and so I am able to start adding linework and colour this week. I don’t have any feedback this week either since I have just been spending my time focusing and didn't get a chance to ask, but I will get some in the next week.
My goals this coming week are to get all of my sketch animation done and at least half of the line art as well as staying motivated and focused enough to get through doing that. I am definitely struggling with the idea of the deadline, so I will need to find as many ways as I can to keep maintaining my work.
Week Sixteen Evaluation:
04/05/26 - 10/05/26
This week, I have continued working on my animation where I finished my sketch and started my lineart, where I have gotten about â…” of the way through. Similar to last week, I don’t have a lot to say this time since I have just been animating, but I will still go over my progress.
I have set myself the goal of finishing my animation by the end of this week, so I have time to do anything I need to catch up and write my final evaluation. I am pretty confident that I can finish the animation this week, as long as I can stay focused, but if I don’t I still have the next week. I want to finish the lineart by Monday next week so I can put focus into the colours and compositing.
Next week, my plan is to finish the animation by finishing the lineart, backgrounds, colours and effects. I will then show my tutor my project for any final feedback. I am less stressed about the deadline this week as I have been able to stay more focused, so I hope I can keep this motivation.
Week Seventeen Evaluation:
11/05/26 - 17/05/26
This past week, I finished my second final piece - my animation. I finished my line art, added base colour, drew backgrounds, and added effects. I then uploaded it, created a feedback survey and reflected on if I had met the goals I wanted to with it.
I am very happy with my progress this week, I finished my animation within my set timeframe so I have this last week just to work on my final evaluation and check back on all the work I have done so far. Reflecting back on my project proposal, I think I have met all of the goals I set for myself, especially in branching out and focusing more on my journey. I do think I could have added a few more process shots to my animating process writing, but since my file was so big I had to merge lots of layers and in the moment forgot to take more screenshots. This will be my last weekly evaluation as in my last week I just need to work on my final one.
I asked for feedback from my tutor for the final time this week, and his only feedback for me was to add clearer photos of my printed book to the page, so I retook some photos of the covers and some open pages with them on the book stand I made. Other than that, I just need to go back and read through everything else I have done so far, which I will do with my final evaluation.
For my final week, I plan to read over everything I have done so far, write my final evaluation and add in all my references and my research log. I am also going to add a section to my website for end of year show preparation.
