The Cult of the Masks

By Caitlin McCaul

January 8th, 2025And with that, the blog posts come to an end. Well... after this one.What a semester it has been but I'm sure you don't want to hear me ramble on about it. No, no. You're here to hear my thoughts on how the project turned out. Right?Well strap in cause I'm diving into what went well, what didn't go so well and in hindsight what could I have done better.

WHAT WENT WELL

For starters, I killed the animation. Like I fully nailed it. I admit I'm not the best artist but animation is something that I've always been into. When I was younger, I was making silent stop motion animations with my stuffed toys, and no I don't have those videos anymore. So being able to dive into an animated project as coursework was so fun. I got the character designs, locations and objects so close to the source material and I loved it. The shot I'm probably proudest of is the gas mask moving cause it was 21 separate stills playing for 3 frames with 3 layers of art work layered on top of each other at 60% opacity. It was mental but it played out so well.

Even though it was a last minute decision, the audio from the Purgatory streams worked so well in the project. In my original notes for the project, I had 1 or 2 of the clips that I included in there as food for thought cause I wasn't sure where I'd take the project. Those who aren't as familiar with the QSMP or the streamers could experience what it felt like watching the streams live while providing some context for the lines of the poem. They also gave me a great laugh while clip hunting. Is it worth mentioning that most of those clips are from Day 1? Hmm, nah.

WHAT WENT BADLY

The narration. I feel like I reached out to people too late for people to record the narration. I posted the casting call on Week 12 looking for someone for the following week. Then over Christmas I was asking around but I think everyone had their own projects and other commitments so they couldn't record. It was a lapse in judgement on my end 100%. However, I'm thankful that the lack of a narrator actually elevated the project cause without that slight mishap, I wouldn't have gotten the audio from the clips.

It's safe to say, I put a lot of work into this project. I think I admitted it in the Week 1 post too. That doesn't necessarily mean that it was a bad thing, however, I definitely experienced burn out over the Christmas break. Between work and three module deadlines, I worked myself into the ground and it did mean I put off some stuff for this project. Hopefully, I can recharge my batteries in the 2 weeks before next term starts, where I'll most likely do it all again, "just keep letting the cycle run you over and over and over again" as one of my favourite songs would put it.

WHAT CAN I DO BETTER?

The most important thing that I could have probably done better was my planning and time management. I should have prioritised working on this project and the other ones instead of doing other less important things. It meant that I'm working up until the deadline rushing to get things in. So that one's on me. But I don't think that the project came off as rushed or is of less quality than my other projects. Every projects needs are different, each contain a varying amount of work and effort to be put in.Overall, I'm extremely pleased with how 'The Cult of the Masks' turned out. Who knows, maybe I'll do another animation project on the future.