Comic Strip Reflection

I will Compare my Flash animation with TOME, a professional series on Newsgrounds.com My animation doesn't really move a lot so the characters are always static. Although both examples are of a comedic genre I think TOME portrays it better because it's fully voiced and is a lot longer... it also has funnier content. The characters in my comic don't really get introduced and you are just thrown into it but in TOME it takes time introducing each character and develops them well.

•What could I do better next time?

            I guess I could include more animation in mine. It was a little static and only speech moved plus one instance of a gun moving into the screen. I could also include a little more explanation to the story, the characters just... pop into the animation without any introduction and you don't really get to learn their names.

•What skills could I improve upon?
                  I need to improve my animating skills in flash and include buttons and more dynamic animations. My Flash art skills are good but they could use some toning, I'm to used to tracing images and not drawing my own. Also planning needs to be to a higher standard than just a few slides and storyboards. 

•What went well?
            I think the art aspect of the project went quite well. The visual style was consistent through out the animation. The speech of the strip stayed consistent too, it was a well rounded animation but there wasn't much to it, but maybe that's its charm; short, sweet and funny. Makes sense if you think about it, the longer a joke is the less funny it could become if told wrong.

•What did not go so well?
            At first I could not get the timings and frames right but after revision I just added more frames and it seemed to work out fine. During the process I did come up with a few bugs like missing frames and animations that didn't quite go to plan such as in the Confused Seeker panel the question marks would not move the way I wanted until I redid that part of the animation until it functioned correctly.

•Time management – did I use my time well?
            The time I was allowed gave me more than enough time to complete the animation and Revise it several times before handing it in. So I believe I used the time to the best of my ability and possibly more. I seemed to finish before most people in the class and even had time to do other animations such as a simple platformer game that actually worked.

•What have learned – how far have I traveled
            I have discovered that I am quite a good Flash artist but I realized I still need a bit of work on animating. When I first started the project I was a little nervous because I didn't really know how to work in Vector form but once I grasped the basics I gained confidence and produced some good pieces of work such as a fully functioning platforming game with simple reset boxes and even a Vision camera that follows the character.

•What am I confident with

           I am confident with my ability to create good pieces of artwork using Flash's drawing tools. I'm also confident with the timeline and how it works. I am now confident in using Flash as a whole.