Audience Profiling
27th Nov. MMXXIV
Our lesson for today was to develop an awareness of audience needs in Creative Media. This unit is different from the other units, as the unit provides an opportunity for us as students to demonstrate an understanding of audiences. Along with the importance of teamwork by collaborating with our audiences during engagement testing.
Understanding Audiences
Understanding audiences is a very important factor for success, if someone didn't had a grasp on what their market was, they wouldn't know what or how to keep or attract their customers.
IV Pillars Of Audience Profiling
We will need to understand our audience's behaviour, including important factors such as their lifestyle(s), interests, beliefs, and so on.
Use Demographics to segment audience members by persona
Age, sex, religion, location, education, valuable starting points for generating your audience's persona, and data to help understand your audience's behaviour
Messages targeted to the audience persona
Once you have a persona you can identify as being your audience, you then can create media products or advertising that is designed to resonate with, or challenge their perceptions with a message.
Precision engagement with your audience
Where and when to promote your carefully crafted message for greatest impact. Important factors to consider include the specific platforms used by your target audience and critical timings.
Measuring
Quantifying the reach and engagement of your marketing with your audience not only determines the success of your marketing, but also enables you to fine tune your future ongoing approaches.
Creating an audience persona - Demographics
- Personal Info. Name, age, and geographic location.
- Content preferences. Favourite channels, content formats, tone and style.
- Business Background Info. Job Title or education level, level of influence in decision making processes.
- Obj. Measurable goals related to the persona's job.
- Challenges. Frustrations and pain points standing in the way of the persona's goals.
- Player/type. For game projs. what psychology models can you apply to better understand your audience?
Overall, in order to understand our audience, we will need to know what our preferred audience is, and how and what we will need to do to achieve that. This will be key to have a comprehensive grasp on audiences.
Audience Persona Embedded Slide
A small task was to create a slide of our audience persona. I straight ahead and went for the most common audience being, teenagers around the age of sixteen to eighteen.
This was a warm up, to make us start thinking critically about the vast amount of factors that leads into compiling and making up our audiences.
Personal Skills Audit
DDS - Japanese Game Dev Culture
First Team meeting - Reflective Journal
28th Nov. MMXXIV
Our goal for today, was to learn who the marketing team were, outline the discussion with the marketing team, create a mindmap with our small groups of three/four, and then our development of our ideas. We were to asses the potential ideas for an original media product and consider its audience and to begin the R&D for an original media product.
The Marketing team, is to guide us through out the process of the production phase on set days. They went over a couple rules and pieces of advice that we have to follow, to make sure that whatever the content is, it doesn't paint the college in a bad light and focuses on too many mature themes at the same time. From what the marketing team had described as our potential audience, I could see myself as being the potential audience member. But the majority of people that this project is targeted towards is people from secondary school or even younger.
Here is the jumble of ideas that we came up with. A couple note worthy ideas were; "A choose your own adventure-esc" game, "Stanely Parable"-esc game, with voice acting being the highlight. A visual novel starring the staff as NPCs. Maybe a Pokemon-style RPG, including side-quests, incentive being EXP, and places requring EXP. With the game engine being used is either Unity or Construct, and artstyle being pixel art or 3D, or even an anime.
On the animation front, we were dry for ideas. But one was an Animated Sitcom featuring the staff members.
I think, myself, that I wouldn't mind doing any of the stuff me and the team did, even if it isn't the cream of the crop. I liked some of the ideas that other people and groups brought forward, like the anime opening idea. As it is more attainable and "easier" than coding a whole game.
Contextual Analysis - Anime OP
Reflective Journal - Generating audience profiling questions
The Target audience was made with consideration for what our potential audience would be. And I think with some tweaks, it has potential. But this is what me and a classmate has came up with.
Project Concept Pitch
For this pitch, I decided to pair up with a classmate to showcase both our sides. Since we had conflicting ideas, we just split the presentation into two. I went for a more indie/chill vibe with my side. Choosing a song I like personally, but it makes sense as the survey conducted showed some people wanting or preferring to "lofi". But I understand that its a small majority compared to people who like pop or hip hop. Which Vraj adhered to, by choosing a pop single.
I had to create a new audience profile, after reviewing the survey results. Which made me take a new perspective, as I was only looking at the "GCSE"s part of the audience, and didn't take into account for people who would join with their GCSE's finished.
Survey Results
Link to the results of the survey.Week I - Pre-Production
It is officially the start of our production for the Animation piece. And this week, I have to make a storyboard that roughly is about 5 to 10 seconds, the feedback I get back from it, and then set up a Schedule to accomadate everything.
I also will need to get people to sign some release forms, as I want to draw a classmate in a scenario I am thinking of.
Schedule
We were tasked to make our own schedules using a template provided. And I made my best guess as to how the animation process would play out. I made sure to give myself ample amount of time to create the animatic, then make the animation piece. I don't know if I will be using a mouse to draw, or on a graphic tablet. But whichever yields the best result of efficiency and quality. I will use that method.
The Storyboard
I went with something very weird, I used MS Paint to quickly make the drawings, and I think this is sort of doable. But I don't know how I would do the beginning scene, of a camera going into someones mouth. Maybe rotoscope it, or trace it over a couple images online.
Another thing I would be concerned with is trying to make it a bit cohesive, as right now, it looks like someone taking a trip with some 1-up shrooms. And that may or may have not been the intent. I also added camera and character motion lines to indicate how the animation would play out. This might be confusing for our audience persona, as they would not understand anything. So later on, I might need to make it more coherent.
Week II - Pre-Production
A full week has now passed, and I am on track so far with how much I am keeping pace with the schedule, as well as with my peers.
Animation test I
Using the key frames from the storyboard, I had drawn and made the guy falling down and spinning backwards. This was fun to do, but a bit tedious, as I had to get the body proportions 'sort of' right, as I didn't want my character increasing and decreasing in size.
I also got permission early in the week from a classmate to use his likeness in the animation. My old friend 'Dennis', signed the release forms, and was hesitent as to what he would be portrayed as. But after some arm twisting, he accepted it.
I was given expressed permission to use his photo here.
I drew some poses that Dennis would be in, front, side, top and bottom. He has a very sharp jawline, and a beard, and is blond. So that is a lot to consider. As I would need to make sure he sort of looks like what he looks like in real life. As it would nice for some people in the audience to recognise one of their classmates.
In other news, my other classmates are still in the same boat as me roughly, with some alreadly in the animation stage, but mostly everyone in the animatic or storyboarding phase. Next week I would have to consider quickly moving onto the animation phase, in order to be on track with the schedule.
Week III - Production
Hi, hello, this is my third week, and this is when production officially starts. The only things I have finished in my "Pre-Production" weeks, is one part that I 'sort of' animated as a reference, (to be used as a guide when animating), and with the rest of it being used as an animatic.
Using the animation I made last week, I drew over it as a reference, and tried to match his likeness in the photograph of him.
I tried to use the mouse as a way of animating it, but the drawing looked worse than the sketch before. And I had to resort to using a graphic tablet again, and I felt like this was better.
I did a bit of experimenting with the colouring, rather than using the fill bucket way, I made it more "abstract". As to showcase the absurdity of the situation the character is in.
Animation Test II
When I exported the animation, the sketches below the finished animation reel were still present, and this a funny quirk of the software that Adobe Animate has. But some of my classmates liked it, so I kept it in, as it helped with 'smoothing' out the flow of the animation.
Here is the head I worked a bit on as the sketch, using the aforementioned mouse method as a quick test. And what I wanted to achieve wasn't possible, so back to the graphic tablet I go.
Overall, I am happy with the progress so far that I have achieved with my limited drawing capabilites. But that is all I can say.
Week IV
With one week left, I had to hurry up and finish my side of the animation. I would need to scrap one part of the animation and replace another part of the animation with something easier to animate.
This week I had finished the head, and added some floating rocks to make it look like a planet head, this was a reference to the "show me what you got" floating heads from the 'high intellectually'-requring show 'Rick And Morty™'. This was quite fun to draw, as I had to use the process of easing in and out to make the rocks 'feel' like they are actually being orbited around the head.
Animation Test III
I grabbed a random royalty free image of a space image as placeholder. And used Adobe Premiere Pro to make the scene more dynamic, and cut down on drawing a whole brand new scene. By reversing the falling animation on the second part.
Animation Test IV
Here is the cool lil animated explosion I animated seperately, that I will add onto the animation later on. This was suprisingly easy to draw, as I had to just understand the expanding and decreasing mass of the explosion that would occur. And the light diffusing and being diminished over time. I also secretly added my name and three of my other classmates in there, as one animator did in the "Spider-Man: Into The Spider Verse" film.
Week V
This is the last week of production, and I would need to wrap up production immediately, as I only got a few days left before the animation is shown to the public.
I started work on the beginning part of the animation, scrapping the whole "rotascope" idea of the head. And replaced it with something obviously referencing a popular game. I wanted to make Bojack Horseman push the character down a hole, but the diamond minecart idea was more approachable.
I made the colouring process quicker, and used the paint bucket tool where needed, and just made another layer for the hair colour, as that was quicker. I didn't like what I had drawn, and I would have redrawn it, but there's no time, and it is almost passible to the average joe anyways.
Abby's Final Animation Piece
Using everything I had, I compiled it into one video, using Adobe Premiere Pro again, and I wanted to add one more thing while he was transitioning from the cave entrance to the space below. But simply no time I had. Overall though, I like the blur effect I added in last second on the tree backdrop. And I realised, I can kind of draw at an average level.
Final Outcome
Here is the final animation piece that was compiled by my lecturer, and I like the varying level of creativity everyone had brought in. This was indeed what we stand for, and more with what we have produced as a studio. (Say that again?)
Focus Testing
We went directly to a couple classrooms to give this survey, and asking collectively what the general 'vibe' or census was of our end product. Looking at the focus testing results, it was mostly a success, with almost everyone saying they enjoyed the animation thoroughly. The average score being 3.9 out of 5 from a total of 42 responders. Which is a good score to reach.
The comments and responses were generally quite favourable, only some wanting a different music track to be chosen, which I also had some comments to say about that. But the group collectively didn't care for that.
Using the survey, I made an update to the audience profile from the start of the project. In which, I used the research gathered from the survey to make a more 'appropriate' reflection of a more serious audience profile. Here it is:
Unit X - Evaluation
This group project in retrospect, a fun, but difficult mountain that I, and my classmates had to go through.
Before we landed on any concrete idea, we first had to know what, or in this instance, whom our audience(s) were. And that was our first task we did, brain-storming ideas for a possible advertisement we could use as a way to showcase during the college's open-day. My group was a bit hesitant in coming up with some ideas, but I thought a "Pokémon"-styled RPG game, where we recruit the staff around the college to defeat or resolve issues and challenges that would appear in the college. Another idea was a "Seinfeld" inspired sitcom we could animate.
But we landed on an "Anime-Intro" as our choice to go through with. I personally was a-okay with it, and in hindsight, this was the easiest and most intuitive thing my class could have went through. Even though our class has the ability to code, I don't think collectively we would have been able to make a game that I would have been proud of.
However during a mini group-project. We had to make a power-point slide on what our audience persona was, and I am surprised as to how close our audience profiling was. Except to some nuances that wasn't spotted in the beginning, like students who did really good in their GCSE's but didn't want to go through with sixth form.
Reflecting on the biggest challenges with my animation process, I wish I went through another re-draft of the storyboarding processing, as I couldn't do my animatic justice with my limited drawing skills, and I should have scaled back with how 'weird' and 'out-of-this-world' I was. One thing I did good was taking a student's likeness as inspiration to be used in my part of the animation.
One thing I liked about my animation was the character falling, and it turned out amazing, as I actually mapped out the body falling with the clothes flailing through space, but I wish this wasn't the only good part of the animation I did. As the rest of the animation looked too 'scrappy' and basically unfinished. Which made me feel like I didn't do enough to contribute to the overall project.
I didn't like the music track chosen, as it gave the animation a whole different vibe than what the others have tried to share. But it fits with what our audience persona would have expected at the start of the project. A "hip and vibey" beat that most teenagers around the age of fifteen to eighteen would instantly recognise, due to the association of the song being featured in the first "Spider-verse" film. This was our client's choice at the end of the day, so there was nothing I could do realistically than trying to show other possible song choices.
On the note of the couple of 'Client feedbacks' we had were useful, in slightly steering the course of this hypothetical ship onto the right direction, (instead of an iceberg). As half-way into the production cycle, we slowly were about to lose focus onto why we were actually making this animated piece in the first place, an advert to be shown to potential students who come to the open-day. I was told that my animation was a bit too confusing, and so I added a scene before the 'falling' part, where Dennis, the person who agreed to me drawing him, was in Minecraft, riding a minecart, and goes down into a cave enterance.
But other than the music track, I wish we would have included the other media department more in the production process, as their experitse and knowledge would have greatly sped up and improved how the end product would have ended up as. Although, at the same time, too many cooks in a kitchen would have slowed down production, or even made the end result a bit underwhelming.
The audience response we had was seemingly positive, with one student saying, "it was lit". And coupled with the survey my class went through to disect, it was exceedingly glowing. I am glad our animation was seen with high appraise from people in and out the college.
Overall, I think this was an excellent animation reel of what my class has made, it is successful in showcasing our diverse and creative minds at hand, but I feel like I could have done more in how I presented my specific piece of animation. But this was good practice onto how real clients would actually be like. Needing a product, and giving pointers onto how they would want their end-product to be like.