Project Reflection

Through this project I’ve gained a stronger insight and awareness of where my capabilities lie within graphic design and I’ve faced various issues and challenges that I’ve had to work around in order to create a production piece that I feel proud of. I’ve surrounded this project with areas of design I enjoy along with topics that interest me to make sure it’s work that I’d want to develop during the academic year. I wanted to make this assignment as rewarding for myself as possible but still be a challenge, however I think in certain aspects I set my sights too high in what could be achievable which caused me to be more unsure of the direction the project was heading in.

Tale Trek as a whole is a brand I believe I conceptualised successfully, throughout the brand identity, mission statements and modern use of technology used to modernise a classic experience.

Obstacles

As soon as I had ideated the concept of Tale Trek I knew I wanted to use animation to enhance the brand visually, whether that be in 3D or 2D forms. I set out with high ambitions of creating an immersive tour using virtual headsets where animatics could run alongside the user whilst exploring. I had also wanted whoever was immersed within the reserve to be able to interact with the animated animals, however with the software capabilities I had available to me it would not be possible for me to merge both moving animation overlayed on top of a moving background. After I did more research on possibilities where I could achieve similar outcomes I landed on learning how to motion track 3D models which was a concept that I became much more familiar with over time.

An issue that arose whilst I was learning how to motion track the 3D animal models against the reserve background was knowing how to animate them correctly in a way that didn’t appear jittery and choppy. This was a long and tedious process that required me to go frame by frame through the video, altering the orientation and scale of each model so it could fit into the scene logistically. Many times throughout this process blender had crashed, causing save errors resulting in me having to do the same amount of work twice.

Time Management

Overall my time planning could have been more consistent and organised throughout the project. I managed to meet self organised deadlines for separate elements of the project, however they sometimes came last minute due to software issues and changes in project direction that I decided were necessary. In order to improve upon this I should’ve allowed myself to work on multiple sectors at the same time instead of getting tied down by one element of the campaign and spending too long trying to perfect it.

Initial Planning

From the beginning Tale Trek was always going to be an organisation that revolved around childhood nostalgia, using child-like narratives and illustrations to build up the main component of the brand. I feel like I kept to this initial concept well and my character designs reflected and fit in appropriately with the childhood story books that I took inspiration from.

To begin with I hadn’t anticipated that my final 3D animation would include so much sound design and video game-esque assets but during the process of animation I knew this would be necessary in order for the audience to follow along with the story, especially through the use of the text dialogue boxes.

Strengths

I believe the strengths in this project revolve around the immersive elements that set it aside from other similar organsiations along with the bridging of real world and computer generated graphics. They allow for a fun and interesting watch as well as lessons that can be learnt from an educational standpoint. I think the animated trailer also bodes well with the virtual tour as they both work well to explain each other’s attributes. The virtual tour follows the same path as the animation so users can explore the tour and point out different features that they recognise from the animation and vice versa.

I think Tale Trek’s overall branding is strong and has potential to be expanded further down the line based on what already exists of it. The brand guidelines allow for more products and adverts to be designed as well as more interactive elements.

Areas for Improvements

If I were to redo this project one of the main thins I would like to incorporate more is higher levels of interactivity. As of right now there isn’t that many ways for the audience to interact with the animal mascots through the virtual tour and animation so if that were to be increased it could further Tale Trek’s interest and user engagement.