Project Brief

Employment Brief

11 Second Club – Short 3D Animation

Alex Webster

The project involves creating a 3D or 2D animation that is around 11 seconds long, and then upload it to the site. I will be given a 11 second sound clip that is pre-made by the competition owners and is taken from a famous film or TV show or some other kind of media. The animation can use any of my own models or environments, but I can also use a pre-made rig that can be downloaded on the site.

The rules of the competition are that I must use the sound clip provided, and no other sounds are to be added to the clip, although I may add silence to fill space at the beginning and end if necessary. Also, the file size must be under 10MB, as the site will automatically reject it if it’s any higher. My name and contact info are not allowed to be on the animation or anywhere in the video, as to make the voting fair. In addition, copyrighted characters, rigs or environments, unless I have the rights to use them, are especially not allowed. Finally, offensive images such as excessive gore, crude sexual humour or intolerance towards any culture, religion, gender, etc are strictly forbidden. Also political statements inside the animations will cause it to be disqualified also.

The animation has to be completed and submitted by the end of the month for each competition. The one I will be doing will end on March 31^st 2014. It is critical that it is handed in before this date, as entries will not be accepted after the deadline, and the submitted entries will be taken in and rated by the community. It must be of high quality by this date, with smooth animation, decent looking environments and it match up with the sound file effectively.

Throughout the project, I will be performing ‘review dates’ in which I will show my work, and check with my tutor that the project meets acceptable standards for the timeframe. Ill also use these dates to gather feedback from my peers by posting my work publicly and having them comment with feedback via Facebook or other medium.  In addition to this, the dates will server a second purpose, as they will be good milestones and guidelines for when certain sections of the project should be completed for, and help with time management throughout the project.

The budget for the project will be very low or cost nothing at all, since I most likely won’t need any external help from other designers, or purchase software I don’t already own. Since no money will be spent, the project will not have much risk, and therefore it may be less motivating to complete it to a high standard, but I will put as much effort in regardless, and attempt to complete it to a more than acceptable standard by the end of the project.

This project will be marketed towards people in the same work area as I am, which include a wide range of animators, from the students just learning the software and styles, to the professional animators in work and companies already. This means that the age range will be quite wide, but will be teenagers and above. They will be very critical of the work I submit, pointing out even the smallest details, such as the way the sounds match up to the animation or the timing of the animations themselves and the camera angles. This will be really helpful for my project as the feedback given when I have finished will be very constructive and informative, which will be put into my conclusion when I review the project as a whole.

Copyright may affect my project, since collecting textures for the project may be difficult in places, for example any food items or products will have to be fake, in or to not break any copyright laws. In the rules it specifically states that you are not allowed to have copyright material in the animation, so this is very important to avoid.

The purpose of this animation will be to entertain the viewer, most of this will be done through humour, using the characters expressions or actions to achieve this. It will also be done by thinking outside the box with ideas for what will fit the audio clip provided, and not just creating what would be obvious to the listener.

The various milestones in the project will involve creating the storyboard for the animation, creating the characters with clothing, creating the environment, animating the scene and then adding the sound to it. At each of these milestones, I will ask my peers and tutors to review and give feedback on them, so they can suggest improvements and I can judge the quality of the assets.

To determine whether the project was a success or not, when the animation is submitted, it will be rated by the community and commented and critiqued on. Since this is my main audience, I will use the feedback and ratings on the site as a measure of its success, and compare it to the other entries in the competition.