Self Critique

A Guinea Pig's Life

I originally just wanted to do a stop-motion of paper cut outs of a guinea pig grabbing an apple and dragging it back to his igloo. But after the critique from last week, I decided to expand that idea by having him also drink water and then have him seen on the toilet. The main source of this idea is from my love of owning pet guinea pigs and being able to convey just how silly and adorable they can be. I wanted my audience to express their awe or laugh at this guinea pig's antics, much like how I do with my own furry friend.
The synopsis of this story is that a guinea pig is seen in his cage, drinking and eating like how one normally does. But then the audience is able to take a peek inside his igloo, where guinea pigs like to hide and sleep, and see him on the toilet reading a newspaper as he does his business. The guinea pig spots the audience and then the film concludes with the guinea pig looking through his cage bars to stare at the audience before disappearing. The theme of this project is about how it's like a guinea pig is in their own little world that we are able to see glimpses of.
The strengths of my film would have to be the aesthetic of it; the look and design of these paper cut outs. For the most part, the timing is decent and the movement of the actual pieces flows nicely. But, some areas need a pause for a little longer than what was given. And the guinea pig's face is hard to see with such a dark paper against black paper. It'll be easy enough to just add the frames to make a longer pause and the guinea pig can be given some kind of a white marking on his face so his expressions are easier to see.
I discovered that when making this film on 24fps, it's important to move the assets from position to position as slowly as possible in order for everything to run decently. There are a lot of parts that move too quickly because I didn't take into to consideration how stop-motion worked. But after this project, I see now how to make an even better stop-motion film.