FMP: Weekly progress- week 1

Week 1: (17^th April) Pre-production: (L.O 3.1/4.1/5.1/7.1/7.2):

This week, I have officially begin the production of my Final Major Project. However, before I began any of the main project I had to complete some pre-production documents, some which were tailored to my project and some which were essential for time management and proposing my idea. For instance, my proposal outlined everything from what my idea was and how I had planned to research it to my chosen mediums of presenting it. To ensure that I am on track with completing my work each week and to meet the deadline, I also produced a production schedule which includes what I need to do each week and the required equipment and/or software I will need. From this week I will reflect on it with what I have completed and what needs completing overtime or urgently.

Here is my proposal and my production schedule:

Candidate Name	Grace Pulford
Candidate Number
Pathway	Print and Journalism
Project Title	How the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise has changed overtime.
Section 1: Rationale (approx. 150 words)
My FMP area of interest will be on the Sonic the hedgehog video game franchise and how this has changed over the years. This is because I have been a massive fan of the franchise and mascot for over 7 years now and I enjoy learning about the history and in-depth details of the character as much as I love playing the games. This is a topic which I could easily turn into a journalistic project using various skills and software learnt over the last 12 units as well as enhance my current knowledge and love for the franchise.
Section 2: Project Concept (approx. 200 words)
For my project my main aims are to: produce an animation covering how the Sonic franchise has changed over the years. Due to this topic sounding very vague and could cover many paths, I will focus on and research four main areas I feel qualify his topic most: what made the gaming mascot stand out during the 1990s, how the transition from 2D to 3D affected the franchise, specific games that have made an impact and SEGA’s relationship with Nintendo has affected the franchise. This will prevent me from losing focus on my main hypothesis yet research all that is most relevant for my project. I will be producing an animation for this project because I feel it would best way of showing it and also engage my target audience into it more also with the use of music clips from games and a voice-over explaining the information. However, I have also researched SEGA’s copyright policies since the only way I can appropriately portray my topic is with the use of existing characters such as Sonic himself. Aside from existing characters and music clips, I will create my own settings and additional visuals in my own style to make the piece more unique and enhance my creativity. On the subject of target audience, my target audience for my project are fans of Sonic the Hedgehog franchise (games or character) those who have played the very first genesis games and even gamers in general who may want to know more. As for technical requirements of this project, I will require the Adobe Photoshop and Premiere Pro software to develop and edit my animation together. The rest will require my own artistic skills to draw my images for editing into a fully motion video. Before commencing, I will produce a storyboard and/or a documentary-style script to suit my animation to encourage my journalistic skills and consider my word choices for the Voice over script format.
Section 3: Evaluation (approx. 150 words)
When I evaluate my work, I will be producing a blog post for each week of production which will be covering: what work I have completed, any changed to original production ideas and why and what problems I face that week and how I overcame them I will also analyse peer and tutor feedback om my work and how I’ve implemented their suggestions into my project to enhance it. During my evaluations I will also be comparing and contrasting other visual formats and animations similar to mine and what I can apply from them to mine to enhance the content and visuals of it where applicable.
Proposed Research Sources and Bibliography (Harvard Format)
This will be updated once all scripts, storyboards and other mood boards have been fully completed.

Project Action Plan and Timetable
Week	Date Week Beginning	Activity / What you are intending to do – including independent study	Resources / What you will need to do it – including access to workshops
1	17th April	·       Finish the voice-over script completely, ·       Start work on the animation, ·       Complete all background art for the animation (ongoing). ·       Complete weekly summaries, blog posts and/or evaluations.	I will require the use of Adobe Photoshop and Premier Pro to fill in and assemble the frames into the desired framerate once all of them have been hand-drawn by me.
2	24th April	·       Complete part 1 of animation, ·       Complete weekly summaries, blog posts and/or evaluations.	I will require the use of Adobe Photoshop and Premier Pro to fill in and assemble the frames into the desired framerate once all of them have been hand-drawn by me.
3	1st May	·       Start part 2 of animation including sketches and storyboard. ·       Complete weekly summaries, blog posts and/or evaluations.	I will require the use of Adobe Photoshop and Premier Pro to fill in and assemble the frames into the desired framerate once all of them have been hand-drawn by me.
4	8th May	·       Complete part 2 of animation, including editing, ·       Complete weekly summaries, blog posts and/or evaluations.	I will require the use of Adobe Photoshop and Premier Pro to fill in and assemble the frames into the desired framerate once all of them have been hand-drawn by me.
5	15th May	·       Start part 3 of animation, ·      Complete weekly summaries, blog posts and/or evaluations.	I will require the use of Adobe Photoshop and Premier Pro to fill in and assemble the frames into the desired framerate once all of them have been hand-drawn by me.
6	22nd May	·       Complete part 3 of animation, including editing, ·       Complete weekly summaries, blog posts and/or evaluations.	I will require the use of Adobe Photoshop and Premier Pro to fill in and assemble the frames into the desired framerate once all of them have been hand-drawn by me.
7	29th May	·       Start part four and conclusion of animation, ·      Complete weekly summaries, blog posts and/or evaluations.	I will require the use of Adobe Photoshop and Premier Pro to fill in and assemble the frames into the desired framerate once all of them have been hand-drawn by me.
8	5th June	·       Have entire animation completed and edited including music clips and voice overs. ·      Complete weekly summaries, blog posts and/or evaluations.	I will require the use of Adobe Photoshop and Premier Pro to fill in and assemble the frames into the desired framerate once all of them have been hand-drawn by me.
9	12th June	·      Start and complete final evaluation, ·      Go through all work and ensure references are correct/in place. ·      Publish all project proposals, screenshots and	I will require the use of Adobe Photoshop and Premier Pro to fill in and assemble the frames into the desired framerate once all of them have been hand-drawn by me.

More pre-production documents were for the benefit of my project. For example, the very first was a voice-over script for my animation where I used my research findings from unit 12 and carried the appropriate ones over depending on how my information was structured. When I showed this to my tutor for feedback he mainly suggested sentence structure and punctuation improvements but he also suggested that I produce a documentary-style script for my animation. At first I wasn’t sure if it was even possible for an animation but I thought it would be a brilliant way to show the action in more detail and ow which sound effects and music clips enter which stage. From there, I started to create a storyboard for my animation (which will be an ongoing task) to show how my animation will flow and follow on after another. After starting the storyboard I suddenly thought that since I plan to use an existing character/video game concept, it would be a good idea to create a mood board of the main character of my project including any other visuals I may need to refer to in my piece. The main point of this mood board is to show that I am correctly Harvard referencing my character so that I will not get accused of plagiarism yet still use him as my focus for investigation.

Here is my referenced voice-over script so far:

Games that have impacted the franchise:

However, the 3D era has shown a worrying rollercoaster in quality (SEGA Archives, 2016) frequently ranging from ‘positive to abysmal’ (SEGA Archives, 2016), with many fans pointing the finger at one particular game: ‘Sonic the Hedgehog 2006’, which was intended to redefine Sonic once again (Treesicle, 2014) on his 15^th anniversary. That’s if you call splitting the development team in half to work on the anniversary title (DidYouKnowGaming?, 2016) and ‘Sonic and the Secret Rings for the Wii (DidYouKnowGaming?, 2016) plus rushing the game for release (Watchmojo.com, 2016) resulting in an inevitably (insert vox pop interviews) rushed, aesthetically poor and glitch-infested mess.

Conclusion:

Although ‘Sonic 06’ made an impact of nearly killing the Sonic franchise (Watchmojo.com, 2016) the very first Sonic the Hedgehog games will always be remembered for brining and keeping the franchise alive; When times got tough for the franchise has always referred back to the 2D games’ style. (Modley, 2017). From the 90s success to the transition to 3D and games that put his reputation in danger, this has all made Sonic the Hedgehog the resilient, memorable icon he is today.

 

My animation will total 2 minutes and consist of four main parts to it. As for next week, I am scheduled to complete part 1 of my animation which will total around 30 seconds of footage. However, for this week, I have managed to complete three out of the four main tasks: finishing the voice-over script completely; completing any weekly blogs and/o summaries and actually starting the artwork for the animation itself. The fourth was to have all background art completing for the entire duration but I have decided to make that an ongoing task since I can focus on it in more detail with each part and in case I need to change or cut any content at all.

Another vital pre-production document I have started is my storyboard for my animation which shows what events are occurring at the moment of the voice over scripts plus who is present and doing what at that time. This is the perfect way to not only plan exactly what to animate (and therefore save production time) but to also reference any existing images that I will be using in my animation. Below is chapter 1 and 2 of my storyboard:

 

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So far I have only done chapter 1 and 2 storyboards because I don’t want to do the remaining 2 in case anything changes with the duration and/or content of the first 2 chapters. The remaining chapters will also be done before animating them since it will allow me total focus on the content and events in them to ensure that it engages with my target audience but keeps on track with my topic.

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