Primary research I have done is actually emailing a Youtuber "Jaiden Animations" otherwise known as "Jaiden" and asked a question about storyboarding and whether she had any tips and if it was necessary for her if she just started animating right away.
She has got back to me and said that there is a lot of storyboarding involved. This made me realise that I have to do a lot more storyboarding than I have been doing otherwise as I tend to do little storyboarding and then go into doing whatever I am doing.
This is because I actually find storyboarding difficult and this is because I tend to come up with stories better when I write them as I go and don't follow a strict storyboard.
I do this because I find storyboards sort of restrictive in what you can do with them.
I do know that they are very useful but I've just never been good at them; however they are something that I need to get better at because if I get great at storyboaring this will assist in me creating a more credible animation and more understandable animation. Than if I went in blind.
I do have a storyboard and a simple outline of what I want to do in the animation but nothing fancy or really fleshed out so I can go in multiple directions for my animations if I so choose.
As I complete more of my animation; I am constantly asking for feedback from my peers to see how they think I could improve my animation. A lot of the feedback that I get is rather simple such as "lessen the glare at this part" or "make this part smoother", every piece of feedback that I get helps me to improve my animation.
The most important part of Primary Research I believed that I have done was actually talking to my step mum about her experiences when working with teenagers that suffer with debilitating mental conditions. She used to be a mental health nurse that specifically worked with helping teenagers and young adults.
What she told me was that a lot of the problems that teenagers face usually come down to them feeling trapped or alone despite the fact that they have loved ones around them.
After learning this, this gave me the inspiration to cover topics that could be seen as controversial or less explored than other topics. I knew I wanted to create something dark but now I had specific ideas to try and show in my animation. These being loneliness and a feeling of being trapped. This would also help me to engross my target audience. This being teenagers that prefer something a bit darker or strange than what you would normally find in an animation.
My step mum also told me that the people she used to work with would be usually unwilling or hesitant to share their problems so this is something that I would want to show in my animation. I thought that I could do this by making the images I show disjointed. This could symbolise that "Fraser's" head is a jumble of thoughts and emotions.
I wanted to try and portray that the images I show are not actually happening and are all metaphors. However I don't know that if this idea is very well presented in my animation. I think I may have made my animation too literal and confusing.
A way I could have avoided this was by asking more people if they think my animation seems to literal and if I should change the images I show to be a bit more subtle.