Visual Effects Final Video Survey Results

The results of my survey were constructive and helpful.

Visual Effects Survey Summarisation

In this essay I will go through each question on the survey I created and distributed and summarise the results of the individual questions. I will then summarise the results of the survey in general at the end to outline the strengths and weaknesses of my work and give myself targets for improvement in future visual effects projects.

Question 1: What did you like most about the animation?

This starting question prompted all positive feedback as it asked people for their favourite aspect of the video, with people focusing mostly on the animated elements of the Mario game being projected into real life and the general idea of this video.

Question 2: What do you think of the quality of the animated elements?

This question also prompted mostly positive feedback with viewers liking the quality of the characters and how much they resembled the original game.

Question 3: How smoothly does the Mario animation animate?

Viewers all agreed that the Mario animation animated smoothly, some also said that it runs very similarly to the actual game. Only one result said that it appeared to glitch in the middle.

Question 4: How well do the live-action footage and animated footage move together?

All viewers thought that the two pieces of footage moved together smoothly but was jumpy at certain points and at one point the Mario footage seemed to jump out of sync with the live-action footage. This was something I did not notice and I do not think was obvious to everyone.

Question 5: If you think the videos do animate together smoothly; how realistic is the scene? If you do not think the videos animate together smoothly; why does the scene not seem realistic? (Don't say, "Because holograms haven't been invented yet")

The general opinion in this question is that the video seems quite realistic except for the moments mentioned in the question above. Some viewer’s even mention that it is because of the introduction footage of the actor setting up the scene that makes the Animated footage seems more realistic.

Question 6: What could be improved?

All of the viewers had a shared opinion when answering this question, saying that the introduction scenes took up to much time in the video and should be shortened. Some viewers suggested improving the motion tracking in future projects so that the animated footage and the live-action footage move together better. Some also mentioned the aura/glow of the characters was a bit strong.

Question 7: What is your overall opinion of the video?

The over all opinion of the video is positive. All the viewers enjoyed watching the video and enjoyed it’s creativity and realism.

Question 8: How much experience do you have with animation?

This question was a multiple-choice question to gain an idea of how much understanding the viewers of the video had of the animation process.

Most viewers selected the option of: Lots, I am an animation student, teacher or professional.

One viewer answered: Some, I have started an animation related course or use online tutorials for fun.

And the rest answered with: Not much, only what I see in films.

From the answers of this question I can assume that the feedback I have received is constructive that most of it can be used as targets for future projects so that I might improve on the mistakes I made in this first visual effects project.

To summarize, the survey results show that some of the weaknesses of my work are obvious to people of any animation experience such as the length of the introduction. However the strengths of the video also seem to be commonly noticed with any viewer, such as the smoothness of the animated characters and the animated and live-action footage moving together also the interesting idea of the video. So even though this was my first visual effects project and despite the flaws in the video, viewers thought that my work was well made, ran smoothly and was enjoyable and interesting to watch.

In conclusion, like with any first attempt at a new thing there are issues, but I believe the issues mentioned above, especially in answer to the survey question “what could be improved” are things that can be improved upon in future projects and with more practice and so I will use them as targets to increase my skill and the quality of future work.

Based on the feedback of these survey results and my own opinions, some preliminary future targets will be to:

-Think more about the camera movement and position in relation to the CGI elements so that they can be shown better.

-Spend more time thinking about the sounds that will be used in the video.

-Think more about the content of the video and focus more on the animated scenes and not long empty scenes with nothing happening.

In the future I think I will create better surveys that have a larger variety of questions so that I may collect more constructive and informative feedback on my work so that I can create more and better targets for myself on which to improve upon, as I believe this survey was not as informative or thorough as it could have been or needed to be to provide me with a good level of constructive feedback.