Peer Review

Peer Animation Review  

Today was ‘presentation day’ for our own animations and a session to view the hard work and creativity of other peer animations in line with writing a review. The selected animation caught my attention today, as it demonstrated that the use of simple materials and a fairly meek concept could actually be exceptionally effective and visually admirable.

Global conflict was the concept leading this stop-motion animation; the idea interpreted from this was that two different colours of plasticine represent the divergence between two countries. For each opposing side, the plasticine was used to create various balls standing in lines; this clearly signified the battle between the armies for each country. The two countries entered a scene of war representing the conflict among our world however eventually the countries merged together creating a world from the green and blue plasticine to demonstrate the idea of peace. The idea of the colours representing the world at the end was a well thought concept and provided a clearer message at the end of the animation. 

The overall use of the plasticine was extremely clever; the individual balls were created to look as if they were fighting by colliding and jumping into the other balls of the opposing county. Perhaps most impressively, was that visually it looked as if each ball was rolling and moving in an impeccable and real-life fashion; hence why this animation not only grabbed but also maintained my attention. It was felt that technically, this animation was extremely challenging due to various measurements required for each ball as well as the numorous re-shaping of the plasticine in each element. Further, it was commented by one of the group members that “we were using memory sticks to put in place of each ball when it was removed from the set to be reshaped to ensure that it remained in the same place”. Unfortunately for this group, the stop-motion animation app that was used did not provide them with the shadow (like Zu3D) that demonstrates where a photo was last taken; this clearly made the positioning of each object an inaccurate and delicate task. 

A further aspect, which I thought correlated well with the concept, was the music, particularly the lyrics within the song. The song chosen was “better together” by Jack Johnson; the lyrics of “we’re better when we’re together” and “life can be deceiving” clearly sums up the concept of global conflict. The melodies within this song gave the animation a lighthearted and easy feel that can detract from the uneasiness of a serious and challenging issue currently facing the globe.

As with any review, there is always the question of limitations and aspects that can be improved. First, the groups members themselves highlighted an issue they experienced with the sound effects; initially, war/battle like sound effects were included, however it was found that the animation did not flow as well as it did without these effects, therefore these were omitted from the final presentation. Unfortunately, I would agree that this would have provided the animation with more depth and enhancement. This issue further leads to the second limitation of planning; if more time had been spent on the attention to detail elements then these could have reinforced the concept along with a few more scenes to again strengthen that message.

Despite the minor limitations, overall, the animation was clear, concise, well delivered, and visually seamless. 

The link is to the reviewed animation is as follows: http://samwhitep132490.blogspot.co.uk