Evaluation

Now that I have come to the end of this project and I am looking back on my work, I feel like I have done a lot better than I thought I would. When I first got the brief, I really wasn't looking forward to it, I was confused about what we were exactly meant to be making as there were no real examples of this sort of thing being done in Ibooks Author. I was also concerned that I had never used After Effects before. 

Throughout this project I have hit a few bumps in the road including A very last minute story change two days before the pitch due to my family having issues with the original story, Ibook restrictions lead me to have to redesign my whole idea and when I came to crit I had some major scene changes. However I feel that the story change worked out strongly in my favor, Ibooks Author is a pain with its restrictions but I feel that having to work around them actually gave my work more structure and having feedback that I need to change two of my scenes and add more animation vastly improved the overall look of my book.

One of my biggest worries was learning After Effects, but now having used it I have realised that it really is quite straight forward, it isn't worlds away from how Photoshop works although your objects move and keyframes are involved.

I have used a wide range of techniques in my work from changing the opacity over time, positioning, rotation, points of interest and scale, on top of this I have been timing my work with my interview which is something I always struggle with, but timing in this project has proved easier than I thought and I am very pleased with the result.

Although I made this project hard for myself by changing my idea, I feel the project went very well and I am truly impressed by how my work has turned out.  

Time Schedule

Here is the time schedule I had planned, Unfortunately because I changed my idea so late in the project and then after I had storyboarded I realised that with Ibooks restrictions I would need to redo them I have quite a few red parts meaning behind schedule. The green parts mean that I was on time or early and the orange parts are where I was close to the planned time but ran slightly over.

User Testing

Now that I have made all of my changes from crit, I need to test the usability of my Ibook. For this I will need to get people to test my book and ask feedback on things like navigation, font size and choice readability, Images size, knowing where to press and so on.
For this I asked a few members of my family and some friends with different ranges of technology use.

My mum, who doesn't get on with technology, said she found navigating around the book simple as it was just a slide across the screen. She said that the text was a good size to read and the font was legible. The only thing that she missed was the sound effects on the phones as she did not think to click them, however I am not too worried about this as the sounds are just an added extra for those who click it and it does not effect the story if you do or don't hear them. 

Stefan tried my Ibook, he is very capable of using the technology and uses Ipads all the time. As expected he had no problem moving around the book and jumping from one scene to another, he also found all of the sound effects. There were no real complaints from him at all.

My Step mother, who is average with technology but does not often use Ipads also found the book easy to navigate round using the side, and now that I have changed the gallery to a clickable one there were no problems looking through the photos. The only thing that she did miss were the phones, this again doesn't cause a huge issue but maybe could have been made more obvious.

All together I seem to have got good feedback with just the phones being missed every so often, but I do not feel that for the sake of a ringing noise a play button over the top ruining the look of the scene would be practical, so for that reason I have decided to leave it and make it an added extra for those who seek it.

Crit Changes

Since crit there are quite a few things that I have changed.

The first thing that I did was take away the blocky heading in my opening movie and created a title page which is made to look like a book showing the user where to start the story, this also sets the scene and tells the viewer what the story is about and where it happened, as like the rest of my book this is all in the cut out effect.

The next things I changed were the photo gallery on section two and the phone interaction on section three. The complaints I received about the gallery were that it was too close to the side of the page and was meaning that when people swiped it was turning the page instead of the photo and the other problem was that some people didn't realise it was a gallery, so to solve both issues, I added thumbnails to the gallery so that it could be clicked rather than swiped and it is now obvious that there is more than one photo to see. The phone in section three was not interactive before crit and people suggested that I do as I planned and make it ring or do something, so i sourced a couple of sound effects so that the phone sounded like it was dialling a number then ringing it when it is clicked on. 

The next big thing I changed was the whole scene for section four, this was originally the same scene as the previous scene but it was suggested that I make it more interesting by changing it to a different scene like in the reception of Kit Wilson, I agreed that it was a better idea to make it different so I fully remade the scene to look like a reception desk keeping the same cut out effect as all the other scenes. I also then added animation and sounds to the scene to make it interesting, I added a ringing sound behind the phone so when it is clicked it can be heard and I also added a search on the computer for my mothers details which can be played when you click the screen.

On the home scene we had the same suggestion that I make an animation to keep it from being a still static page, so I have created a short animation of my mother and the dog walking toward the front of the house.

The second opening house door scene had the same problem as the phone in which people said they didn't want it to be the same scene. So like with the other I made a whole new scene to flow on from the last, to do this I took the same brick wall effect and added a window and a tree, when the window is clicked the blind rolls up and an animation of Archie playing with his ball runs across the inside of the window, then blind then rolls back down when the animation is over.

The last couple of things that I did were create a front cover which I have done to look like a red leather bound book which suits the theme of my contents page with the open book on it and I have also added two extra pages at the end still carrying the theme of the red book. In the second to last page I have a page in the book giving an ending to my story and concluding it nicely and along with that I have photos of Archie, one of which is with the other dogs to show how he is now getting on with them and fits right in. The last page which continues off from the previous shows more photos of Archie, one of which is with my mother to replicate the fact that she had said he was part of the family. There is also a note pad with my book credits on it, saying that I created it and my mum and Archie started in it. The final thing I added to the last page is a business card for Kit Wilson, when you click on this it takes you to their website so that you can see all the good things they do, they did an amazing job helping save all of those dogs including Archie from the shed and I wanted to make sure that they got a mention in my Ibook.

Crit Feedback

After giving my work to the class to crit I am feeling much better about my piece. The feedback was mainly positive and I hav realised that my list of possible changes was much longer than theirs! 
The comments I got about things needing to be changed were:

• Change the fourth scene (second phone scene) so that it is in the Kit Wilson reception, this will show that they called my mum and also to keep the scene from being the same as the previous one
  
• Change the last scene (second door scene) for the same reasons as above
  
• Change the front cover, this is something I had been meaning to do so I am glad this was bought up
  
• Add motion to the scenes that are just still images
  
• Make sure that the boarders are either all the way round or not there at all

These are all things that are very manageable and I am very happy to do, on top of these comments I have also created my own list of things that I would like to get done if possible, those things are:

• Add sounds where necessary -  to the phones so that they ring, possibly in the opening movie also
  
• Change the contents page background so that it acts as a title page pointing to the start of the story
  
• Get rid of the black box and font in the opening movie, If the title page is done then there is no need to have the title dumped in the opening movie
  
• Add a page or two at the end to show photos and videos of Archie now, I still need to decide wether these will be in the cut out effect like the rest or realistic. Having these last pages will stop the story from ending so suddenly and will also make the viewer realise that the story is true and Archie is real.