Overall.

The module overall has been a great experience, it has been very frustrating at times however, and I cannot stress enough how the time scale of the module was not long enough to create something to a high enough quality.
I am overall pleased with what I have achieved in the timescale, and I have learnt an awful amount of new techniques during the learning the period, which will be beneficial for the future.

If I was to do the module again I would avoid going for the realistic look animation, as I feel that I lost a lot of time creating my character and adding definition to make them look realistic, some people went for a cartoon type animation and this mean they did not have to worry about the definition and features of their characters because they simply had none, if I had gone with this approach I would've been able to focus more on just animation alone.

If I could do the animation again I would also revisit the facial expressions of my characters, and learn how to animate the face using a bone structure rather than using the morpher tool, as I was unable to animate the face that was attached to the body, I am pleased with the facial expressions I achieved, however I would've been nice to have animated them while on the body. I would also make sure that the audience cannot see through the characters mouth, as I am really disappointed with this, as I feel it lets the animation down, however the positive aspect I can take away is that I know how to correct that issue, but simply flipping the material.


Below are just some of the learning outcomes I have learnt whilst doing this module:

* Modelling a human character, and learning the importance of topology when coming to animating the model.
* Animating using the CAT method, using pre-set rigs and creating my own rigs, I also learnt how to animate the character applying pre-set animated layers, and also absolute layers to create my own animation
* Creating helpers such as sliders which help control specific aspects of the character, such as the movement of the pupils and the blinking of the eye lids.
* Layer management, I learnt for the first time how to add different parts of the scene to different layers so that they're easier to work with, a little bit like Photoshop.

Other things I have learnt:

* I know for future reference that when animating from scratch using the absolute technique that it is crucial that before animating the objects movement should be studied for a while to learn exactly how it moves, or a reference should be used to help animate it more realistically.