At first, the project started with me going down quite a different route. I wanted to display this idea that people of different appearances didn't have to be at a same conventionally attractive level to be acceptable. The project developed in to how females deal with the issues surrounding their appearance, mainly due to me realising the earlier idea for the project was more based on the idea that I don't see myself as conventionally attractive and in a harsh society where the majority of men will probably see a woman who looks like the opposite to me (slim and white) as attractive, finding outliers whether it were straight girls, boys, lesbians, bi-sexuals or gay men who adored the way someone who didn't fit the conventional idea of beauty, would be extremely refreshing and stop me from making a conclusion that I have to make sure my personality perfect if I want any romantic relations with anybody.
But the more I thought about why I wanted to do this, I felt like the reason for why wasn't following the right path. I needed to look in to why I cared so much and why it has haunted my life as a teenage girl. There are problems in the world far worse than feeling undesirable but when it gets to the point where self hate comes out of the mental and in to the physical, things can get very scary. I witnessed it from four of my friends and advice from one of their doctor's during her struggles with anorexia, even if it kind of worked, was 'you know most guys won't want to go out with a really skinny girl.' This was scary how much we saw value in the way men looked at us.
So I went out of relationships and in to the positive vs. negative experiences with females and their bodies. I exaggerate the word females rather than women, in reference to sex rather than gender, ainly due to even trans men dealing with fighting against the expectations of a person with a vagina having to conform to feminine dresses or sexy lingerie.
I feel like the most stressful part was simplifying the bundle of research already gathered. I had a lot to look at, to work out what message I was planning on specifying in my animation. In a way, I had gone from a more specific idea to a more complicated one. Issues with how a female feels about their body is so much more than just about how she wants to look attractive to the boy she finds attractive. However, I did piece together the right information and set a steady foundation on what I wanted my concept to revolve around.
When it came to animating, I think what was not so successful was not having a definite idea that I could start animating soon enough. By doing this, it would have left me more time to work on sound such as recording voices for characters, collecting and putting background noises together. However, I am happy with the outcome. What was expected was somewhat achieved with a bit extra. An animated music video. At a later date I could add different sounds. I have other songs I'd wish to put an animation to and next time I think I'll try different mediums. After a while, I felt stuck and not able to experiment with textures due to the simple block colours the Flash software provides for animating.
I was given a lot of helpful advice from peers and staff that helped form my main ideas. Questions helped me put together what I needed to make clearer and what messages I had to try and exaggerate the importance of and their necessity to the story. However, I will admit I felt very driven by more of my ideas than anyone elses. It could be seen as a positive but to some extent it kept me a bit closed minded from a few suggestions seeing as I wanted to get away from doing yet another load of research that I had already been looking at. Next time, I intend to take suggestions a bit more seriously and dedicate some time to looking in to them more but keep in mind that I know what I'm passionate about and it being my project, with a message that effects me most, should prioritise what I see important.
All in all, I think the project went the way I wanted it to. There were a few problems but they were small and not too hard to deal with. I feel like this is the first project I have achieved something with a medium I see important to me and a subject that I see important to me.
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