For those unfamiliar with creating animations, this project was a bit strenuous and time consuming, especially while operating under a fixed deadline. In my opinion, this Leap Assignment was far more challenging than the last due to the fact that Leap Assignment #2 required you to collaborate with a partner under the current circumstances of remote learning, while simultaneously navigating an unfamiliar platform. Not being able to physically meet with your partner for a project of this nature was quite a challenge when required to create, edit and record content on a platform that seemingly crashed many times when my partner and I were using it. Given the circumstances, Sam and I were able to communicate via Google Meet, FaceTime and via text to determine our chosen topic, how we would execute our thoughts and ideas and subsequently creating our animation.
More often than not, completing a project alongside a partner is very difficult due to outside forces such as prior obligations, pressing deadlines from other courses as well as allocating specific times and dates to virtually meet. This was not the case for Sam and I, as we both managed to find the time on top of our demanding course load to execute this project to the best of our abilities. The two of us were very unfamiliar with Animaker, as we both had never used the creative application, but quickly learned how to overcome our difficulties with a bit of practice navigating the platform. Sam and I spent hours via FaceTime outlining how to execute our topic of “Who decides what makes media ‘good’” by compiling a scene by scene dialogue of what to include in our animation. By doing so, we were able to create and design our slides including relevant images and stickers to make it visually appealing. The two of us pride ourselves on our hard work and effort that we exert into projects, which is why we dedicated hours to going above and beyond the basic requirements of this project to ensure sure that we were not submitting sub-par work.
Sam and I were both under the assumption that creating a 2-5 minute animation would not take us much time, but needless to say after 3 hours had gone by, we realized that we were completely wrong in our assumption. Although neither of us had any experience using the platform to begin with, by the last slide of our animation we felt as if we had mastered the tools used to complete a creative animation. Upon completing our animation, we realized that Animaker does not allow you to use more than 5 images without a paid subscription, so we had to make edits to our original animation in order to comply with the restrictions. When all was finally said and done, we felt very accomplished with our work and were eager to share it to our classmates and hear their feedback on using Animaker.
While this project definitely had its ups and downs, I do feel that it provided us with a better understanding of how content is generated and the extensive process it takes in order to create such content. Although meeting physically to work on this project would have been more ideal, Sam and I understand that the circumstances of what is happening in the world today would not allow for that and allowed us to get creative and work within our means to deliver a project that we are both very pleased with.