Cross cutting

Stop Motion Evaluation 

Questionnaire response

One way that I have been able to find responses from my animation is by creating a questionnaire and have some people fill it out then I took the responses and broke down what they have said in response to my stop motion.

Genre

Starting out with the asking the them what they thought the genre of the animation is.

I gave them these options to choose from: Action, Drama, Thriller, Adventure and Other.

From the responses that I got I am happy with them as they are the genres that I was aiming for when making my animation. 

The genre is some that I am happy with in terms of the responses that I have received from my questionnaire, the main genre of my animation is something that I have thought about while in the pre-production stage and I tried to make the genre of my animation clear so it would be simple and clear, rather than it being confusing for people watching my animation.

Style

Moving to the next question is me asking about what they thought was the style of the animation was and I gave them these options: Serious, Light hearted, Quirky, Child-ish, Dark and Other and I got the following response:

These results are something that I am not surprised with as this is something that I had thought about while I was in the pre-production stage of my animation so the fact that it was easy for my audience to identify what they style of my animation was proved that while I was working on the pre-production and planning the animation that i was able to make sure that the style of my animation was clear to the audience so they wouldn't be confused, which again is something that i wanted within my animation.

Narrative

I then asked them if they enjoyed the narrative of the animation and all the people who filled in my questionnaire did enjoy and when the following question asked why or how they could be improved then have said the following:

Overall, these comments are ones that I can see where they are coming from with the narrative being simple and that is something that I was aiming for as when I was planning I thought that going for a simple narrative would be more effective than trying something that was more complex considering the duration of my film I thought that it would have been too ambitious to do so. I am also glad that they said that they did enjoy the narrative as i meant that I was able to fun and enjoyable for the audience to watch and not getting bored by the narrative due to it being too complicated.

Character

Next I asked if the characters with my animation reminded them of any other characters from other films/animations a majority of the response answered “No” on that question but some people did click “Yes” and they had all said that the characters reminded them of characters from the “Indiana Jones” films which I don’t disagree with as those films where part of the inspiration for my own characters in my animation so I'm glad that the audience was able to see where I was inspired by.

Techniques

I then asked if they thought that the use of the animation that I have used, which is this case was Lego and clay animation they all said they thought that it was fitting and when I asked why they thought it worked, here are some of their reasons for why they clicked “Yes”:

With this feedback that I have got I feel that it is able to validate my decision in the planning stage of my animation to use both clay and Lego animation as I wanted it be simple and I am also glad that they think that it is able to fit the narrative of my animation as otherwise I thought the the audience would think that i am trying to do to much instead of keeping it simple but effective.

Technical qualities

The next question that I had asked was about if they thought that the animation was well made for this the people that answered my questionnaire they said that they answered “Yes” and when asking them to explain their answers they said the following:

The feedback that I have got from them is all add up to the fact that they think that my animation has been well made and the additional comments about improvements I think that they are useful, for instance the ending making it a bit clearer which does makes sense and the dialogue is a little distorted but that is due to me putting an effect on the voice clips so to change the voice should i remake it I would them not distort the voice as much as I actually did so that the audience would be able to understand what the character at the end is saying. Since they also talk about how I could use close-ups which I did try but the reason that I didn't use them was all down to the set, so if I was to redo the set i would make it easier for me to do close-up and other camera angles.

Aesthetic qualities

The next question that I had asked was asking about what they thought about the sound, camera work and the lighting of my animation, for this the people that answered my questionnaire had the following to say about what they said about my animation.

I am happy with the feedback that I have gotten and I can see where one of the people were coming from when they are mentioning the flickering light in the animation but that was something that was intentional as I thought it would be appropriate for my animation especially when the two characters are inside of the cave as i don't think the light wouldn't be flickering as it would be more like torch light than natural light. 

Creative qualities

The last question that I listed on my questionnaire is asking them if they thought it was an original idea and for a majority of the answers answered “Yes” to the question but a few people had said both “Yes” and “no”, their reasoning for the answers that they gave was similar to the response from question four, that being that it had an Indiana Jones feel to it, which as I said before is something that I can agree as I have taken inspiration from those films. However, I was glad to see that they said that it had “some original back story elements” which as feedback I am happy with as they could see where I got inspiration from but that they could also see that I had added my own ideas to the concept.

Survey Monkey responses 

I have also used Survey Monkey in order to collect responses on my animation so I took the questions from my questionnaire as I thought they were good questions to get a good response from people and by also using Survey Monkey it meant that I was able to easily analysis my results for each question and it also meant that I was able to send it out to get more responses from people.

Genre
I started out with my the genre question and the results for this question are as followed:

The results for this are similar to the responses are similar to the response for my questionnaire, which isn't that surprising as i tried to make my genre of my film quite obvious as I had mentioned before I wanted to make my film simple so making the genres obvious because I thought would be the better for the audience as it would mean that they would be able to easily identify what genre it is meant to be also it meant that when I was making the animation I able to clearly know what I wanted the end product to be.
Style
Moving to the style question, I got these response from the my audience:

Again these responses are similar to my questionnaire the main exception being that more people saying that it was dark which was a tad surprising because I had thought that it was more light-hearted which was reflected in my questionnaire responses, but this shows that from a style point of view that people that watched the animation thought that my animation was varied and shows that the audience for my Survey Monkey responses are similar to those one of my questionaire.
Narrative
When asking them about the narrative of my animation they said that they enjoyed it and that they they thought that overall that the narrative was simple which had been said before and again is a comment that I am happy with as that was something that I was aiming for when making it, so again it is good that what i wanted has come across in the animation was able to be noticed by my audience.
Character
When asking about the characters in my animation there were about the same amount of people that had said that the characters remind them of characters from Indiana Jones, which as I have said are where I have gotten inspiration for my characters so it makes sense that they would remind them of those films which was what I was aiming for during the production.
Techniques
Next asking people who answered my Survey Monkey about the use of Lego and Claymation used in my animation they said some similar things to what people who answered my questionnaire and said that they thought that it "adds itself to the narrative" and the it is "simple but effective" which is something that I am glad about as it again is what I wanted in the first place.
Technical qualities
This question was asking about what they had thought about the animation and if it had been made well and they said that it had and the reasons that they gave for their answers where because the "audio was synced nicely to the visuals" and they had also said that it was "smooth" and "not too jumpy" which is a good thing as it is what I wanted to and not have an animation that was rough/jumpy.
Aesthetic qualities
When asking about the sound, camera and lighting work, the audience said that they enjoyed it but that they did say that there were things that I could improve such as using close-ups in my animation which is did consider but found that with my set I found that is wasn't going to work for close ups as it was relatively restrictive so should I remake this fill that is something that I could take into consideration also they said that I could fix the lighting as it was flickering in spots and I can agree with this in some places so if I would go back to this then I would try and get a light source that wouldn't flicker unless I needed it to.
Creative qualities
Everyone that answered my survey answered yes when asking them if they thought it was an original which was good as no one thought that I had simple copied other people's work. However, like before the people who watched my stop motion, thought that it had the "feel" or 'vibe" of Indiana Jones to it which as I have mentioned is no problem to me as it was something that I was hoping for so again I am glad that my audience was able to recognise it.

Conclusion
Overall, I have found that getting feedback from my audiences has helped to do two things, in one regard it is able to help validate my choices and decisions that I made while I was making my animation such as the simple narrative of the plot which worked out in the end which I am glad about.
Another way that this feedback has helped me is by giving me ways that i could improve my animation, so in the future should I decide to remake my own animation then I have comments on how to do so such as improving the look of my set, which I am not totally against but I worked with what I had and I didn't want to spend that much money,  this type of feedback I got will mean that I would be able to make a better animation should i decide to remake it.