1. Evaluation
Matthew Evans

2. Production Process
Evaluation

3. Research
Strengths

4. Research
• Overall I think that my research was pretty strong, I spent a lot of time looking
into the genre of horror and what makes horror products successful with their
audience’s. I created a target audience profile which allowed me to pinpoint
and highlight the exact target audience I wanted to appeal to with this final
major project. I used a collection of demographics such as age, gender, social
status and psychographics. Doing research into individual demographics for my
target audience allowed me to create a really in depth analysis of my target
audience. This is a strength because it allowed me to use this information
during the other stages of this project, which allowed me to tailor the
experience to the target audience.
• Upon completing this section of the target audience research, I had a pretty
good idea of who my project may appeal to, one of the groups of people I had
identified in my target audience was those aged 15-25. I then used this data to
identify what forms of social media this age range uses the most. This would
then allow me to identify which social media platforms would be best to use to
reach my target audience. This is a strength within my research as I had
identified my target audience to be mainly in the age range of 16-24, this is
also the age range that is most active on social media. This meant that I knew
the best way to reach my target audience. I then did this same process for all
the different characteristics of my target audience I had collected. For gender, I
researched which social media platforms were more popular with a specific
gender. As I had identified my target audience was mainly male, this allowed
me to further develop my understanding of which platform would be best to
use for this specific purpose and project, strengthening my research.

5. Research
• Finally, I research which movies were scariest according to my target audience.
This was a huge strong point of my research as it allowed me to identify what
makes my target audience enjoy the horror movies they enjoy as I could
compare the movies and find similarities and differences. I decided to use
reddit for this part of my research as it is mainly used by those within the age
range of my target audience and is open for anyone to comment on. This
meant that I could get opinions directly from my target audience.
• Moving on from identifying my target audience, I decided to research some
successful existing products that I could take inspiration from. This was a
collection of films and 3D projects. The first product I research was “The
Backrooms (Found Footage)” by Kane Pixels. I decided to research this project
as it was one of the first things that started my interest in 3D. I was a fan of
what Kane managed to make and thought there were many elements of the
product that I could take inspiration from and incorporate into my own work.
Another reason for researching this piece was that there had been many
breakdowns of the product on YouTube due to its success on that platform,
this meant that I could use these breakdowns to gather an idea of what made
this product successful, making it a huge strength of my research.
• ”The backrooms” is also a series of 3D videos on YouTube which meant that I
could take inspiration from even more of Kane’s work. This helped my final
product immensely as it gave me insight into creating a successful 3D horror.

6. Research
• I also researched two films from the horror genre that I personally really
enjoyed. This made it a strength of my research as I was already familiar with
the product which made it much easier to identify the aspects o the product
that made it successful. The two films that I researched were “A Quiet Place”
and “Scream (2022)”. I had also watched both of these films recently which
further made it easy to identify the aspects that made the project successful in
my opinion. Using this research really helped my final product as identifying
the aspects of horror that creates a successful piece helped me to attempt to
include them in my own work and develop the quality of my project.
• Finally, I researched into some environments created in Blender. I found an
artist that was still relatively new to blender and had only been using the
program for around a year, but his work was really inspiring. I decided to
contact the artist on discord for information about how he creates his 3D
shots. This was probably one of the biggest strengths of my research as it
allowed me to gain a large insight into the technicalities of blender and what to
use when creating a 3D environment. The artist provided me with many tips
and tricks on creating a realistic looking piece and what to avoid in blender, as
well as highlighting many mistakes new artists make. This helped my final
product immensely as it allowed me to save time in the production stage by
avoiding these mistakes that I would have otherwise fallen for, and at the same
time, creating a higher quality final piece because of the tips the artist
provided me.

7. Research
• Whilst researching the existing products I wanted to start thinking about the
colour pallet I wanted to use for this final project. I started to research colours
in film and the meaning behind the colours used. I came across a document on
the internet that broke down shots and explained why the colours that were
used in the shot, were used. From this I gained an understanding of the
meaning of colours and what colours compliment each other and which don’t.
This helped my final product as it allowed me to create a colour pallet that
worked for the feeling I wanted to create while also creating a colour pallet that
wouldn’t clash, making this a big strength of my research.
• I then moved onto more audience research, although this time, I was going to
collect primary data. This was a massive strength of my research as all the data
that I collected was completely genuine and was unaltered/biased. I collected
data about a collection of different horror genre characteristic and what my
target audience thought of those characteristics. I did this by using a survey
that I handed out to my target audience for them to fill in. I then used this data
to influence my final product as it highlighted the aspects of horror that I
should include in my work and those that I should avoid. I also followed this
research up using interviews. This allowed me to directly question my target
audience about the characteristics that the enjoyed most. This gave me
completely reliable data to use for my project. I identified the aspects that I
should include in my own work.

8. Research
Weaknesses

9. Research
• Overall, I'm happy with the research section of this project but I do think that I couple things could be changed
to improve the quality of this document. For example, I think that if I had researched more into 3D software
specific projects and the time taken to create the final shots, I would have been able to plan and time manage
my project more efficiently later on. I could have research some more Blender projects to get an idea of how
long it took the artist to create the piece, then I could compare this to what I wanted to create for this final
major project and if I think that its something that would be achievable within the time frame that I had. This
could have changed the outcome of my final major project dramatically as I may have aimed to create a
completely different project if I found something either really inspiring that I wanted to take inspiration from, or
if I found that my original plan would have been unachievable within the time frame, meaning that I would have
had to come up with something completely different.
• I also think that if I had done a little more specific research into my target audience, that could have helped to
improve my project as I would have had a more defined audience meaning my final product could have been
altered more to what they enjoy. For example, I could have created a more detailed audience profile by including
things such as geodemographics in my audience research, which could have changed the outcome of my final
project dramatically.

10. Planning
Strengths

11. Planning
• I also think that my shot list created a good visual plan for me tom follow
during production which also saved me a large amount of time as I never
needed to stop and think about what I wanted to do during the production
stage of this project. Although I never really followed the shot list whilst
animating the camera towards the end of the production stage, I still followed
this plan during the modelling stage for this project.
• Everything that I modelled as to be appealing from the shots that I picked out
for this shot list. When I modelled anything inside of Blender, I referred to my
shot list to identify where my camera would be in the scene that I was
modelling. This allowed me to always stay focused on what needed to be
modelled, which caused me to always be focused on making the models look
the best I can. I also referred to my shot list when modelling to use the camera
angle I identified to view the models that I had created. I always made sure
that the models looked good in relation to the rest of my scene from the angle
I had chosen in my shot list. I did the same thing when texturing my scene. I
think overall this allowed me to create a scene that I was aesthetically happy
with even though I didn’t follow the shot list.
• I believe that this shot list helped my project the most from my planning
document as it saved a large amount of time during production as well as
always keeping me on track during the production stage.

12. Planning
• Although my planning for this project was not the best, I do think that it set me
up with a general idea for what I wanted to achieve from this project. I knew
from the get go that I wanted to create some sort of horror project as I knew
that it is something that would be achievable within the time frame. I think
that outlining thee idea for what I wanted to achieve from this project early on
allowed me to save time in the very beginning of the planning stage of this
final major project.
• I used storyboards to help layout the idea for this initial plan. I believe this is
one of my strongest parts of the planning stage for this project. It allowed me
to create a vague idea of what I wanted to create story wise which saved me
huge amounts of time later on during production.

13. Planning
Weaknesses

14. Planning
• Overall, I think that planning is one of my weakest documents, I think that I
didn’t spend enough time on this section of the final major project and I spent
too much time on certain parts of the document as I struggled for ideas,
meaning I spent less time on the other parts of the document. I think this lead
to a weaker document than I would have liked and I think this could be a cause
of some of the issues I had later down the line, in the production process of
this project.
• I think if I had spent more time planning my project I would have been able to
account for certain things going wrong, such as not being able to get Maya
downloaded on the college Mac’s. If I had planned for this I would have been
able to spend some time prior to starting production, on an alternative
program such as Blender. This would have allowed me to get some experience
in the program and make the start of this project easier. Due to the fact I had
no experience in Blender prior to starting this project, the initial production
stage of this project was quite challenging as I was spending a lot of time on
simple things. If I had planned for this, I could have the practice needed to
complete those early models to a high standard in a shorter amount of time,
meaning I would have had more time later on to spend on either improving
assets or adding new assets to develop the story.
• I believe that this is the main reason why I was unable to complete my original
plan and why I ended up with something that I am still happy with, but
disappointed I couldn’t complete my original plan for this project.

15. Planning
• I think that I should have put some more time into creating a more developed
schedule for the production stage of this project. I believe that one that I had created
was rather weak and not something that I ended up following or even referring to
during production. I think that if I had spent an extra day or so making a more in
depth schedule for production I would have had time to think about more things that
I could encounter during production. I believe that I should have created a schedule
that allows for more room for error, this way I could have followed my schedule
during the initial weeks of production, saving myself time in the later weeks of this
stage.
• I also think that if I had made a more detailed schedule for production, I could have
created a more realistic plan for this project as I would have realised that I probably
signed myself up for something that wasn’t achievable with my current skill level
during the time frame I was restrained too. I believe that if I had created a more
realistic schedule I could have used it throughout the production stage to manage my
time more efficiently and create a better final product.
• Overall, I'm not too happy with myself for the planning I did for this project as I think
it was a pretty big let down for this project as I was completely unrealistic with myself
in the very earl stages of this project. I hope that I can learn from this and plan a
better, more realistic project for next year’s FMP.

16. Time Management
Strengths

17. Time Management
• I believe that throughout the entire project I managed my time relatively well as I always met deadlines for the
work that needed to be complete so that I could move onto the next part of the project.
• During the documentation work itself, I think that I managed my time relatively well as I completed each document
to a good standard and sometimes found myself ahead of the majority of peers. I think that managing my time
efficiently during this part of the project and not allowing myself to get distracted for the project, created the
opportunity for myself to complete the documents to a standard that I was happy with. I believe that I put in a large
amount of my own time into this project in addition to the time that I spent inside of college and I believe because
of this, time management in that sense was aa strength for me during this project.
• Even in the production stage, I still managed my time relatively well as I was able to create a product I was happy
with despite all the set backs that I had as well as having to reserve the final week of production purely for
rendering. I ensured that I didn’t spend too much time on one model as I knew that with my knowledge of Blender
being extremely limited, the models I was creating were never going to be perfect regardless of the amount of time
I put into that specific model. This meant that I had enough time remaining to model all the essentials for my scene
to make the video work.

18. Time Management
Weaknesses

19. Time Management
• At times, my time management skills were an issue in this project. I believe in the initial stages of this project I was
completely unrealistic with myself, causing me to take on too much work for my skill level with the time frame I was
placed in. This meant that I eventually ended up not following my original plan at all an kind of just winging it
through the entire production stage of this project. This meant that I was unable to create a story aspect to my final
major project which was my original plan as I realised the animating an antagonist to make the story work would
take way too much time for the amount of time that I had left as I had never animated a character in 3D before. This
meant that I would have had to watch a collection of tutorials and by the time that I had finished the tutorials, I
would have run out of time to implement the animation skills that I had acquired, into my own project. I believe
that if I had managed my time better and planned more realistically I would have been able to create a higher
quality final piece.
• Although I am happy with the outcome from this project, I think that if I had managed my time better by not aiming
for something that was unachievable within the time frame I had and instead, aiming for something that was
achievable, I could have planned much better in order to manage my time more efficiently to create a higher quality
final project. This could have changed my product immensely as if I had more time to work on this project, id
imagine the final product would have been so much different. I would have had time to animate characters and
other assets around the 3D world I created such as foliage to make the scene feel more alive as well as create some
sort of story around the 3D world to interest the audience more.

20. Technical Qualities

21. Technical Qualities
• My Animation: (YouTube Link)
• Similarities:
• Both animations use CG imagery created in Blender
to provide the visuals for the story and use sound
effects alongside the CG imagery.
• Both animations are horror animations and make use
of horror genre characteristics, although Kane’s is
better due to the loner amount of time he had to
work on his project but both try to achieve the same
goal.
• Both animations use CG imagery to provide the artist
freedom. CG imagery is extremely flexible in what it
allows the artist to create, a 3D artist can pretty
much make whatever they want to make using CG
imagery, the only real limit is the artists imagination.
I think that both animations were created in 3D to
allow the artists to create something that they
otherwise wouldn’t have been able to create/capture
in the real world.
• Kane Pixel’s: The Backrooms: (YouTube Link)
• Differences:
• The lighting in Kane’s video is overall better I think.
His lighting provides the viewer with clear view of the
scene at all times as there are many light sources
which creates a weird eerie feel for the viewer as
that’s not too normal in horror, whereas my
animation is sometime pretty8 dark as I rushed the
lighting setup a little bit due to the time restraints
and the fact that I am new to Blender and Kane has
much more experience in the software.
• Kane’s animation makes use of much smoother
animation than mine. This is because Kane has much
more experience with animation and Blender than I
do. This is my first project in Blender and my first
time animating anything inside of any 3D software.
This allowed for Kane to create a much more realistic
feeling camera animation, and a overall more realistic
feeling final product due to the smoother, more
realistic animation.

22. Technical Qualities
• My Animation: (YouTube Link)
• Similarities:
• Both animations use lighting to add to the horror feel
of their stories. My animation uses a very dark
lighting setup to provide that classic horror feel that
you would find in most horror films, whereas Kane’s
animation uses a much lighter lighting style which is
more unique to his project. Despite this, both
animations are trying to use lighting to the best of
their ability to create the feel they want for their
project.
• Both animations are ultimately trying to create the
same effect on the viewer which is horror, as you
would find in any horror project. This makes the two
animations similar in that regard as both are trying to
achieve the same end goal.
• Kane Pixel’s: The Backrooms: (YouTube Link)
• Differences:
• Kane’s animation project uses a far better sound
design, this allows for the viewer to become much
more immersed in the animation and making it
overall more entertaining to watch. Kane had more
time to create his entire project and I rushed my
sound design slightly, I'm optimistic I would have
been able to create an enjoyable sound design with
slightly more time provided.
• My animation uses a more complex 3D environment
in my opinion. Kane’s project uses a lot of the same
corridors that feel pretty copy and pasted and can get
slightly repetitive whereas my animation uses 2
completely different scenes with a tidy transition
between the two scenes.
• Kane’s animation overall feels more advanced and
enjoyable to watch due to his greater experience in
Blender than myself.

23. Technical Qualities
My Animation: (YouTube Link) • Kane Pixel’s: The Backrooms: (YouTube Link)
Lighting Setup
CG Imagery

24. Technical Qualities
My Animation: (YouTube Link)
• Similarities:
• Both products make use of CG Imagery to elevate the
creators ideas. My animation is fully CG which allows
me to create anything that I want to create for this
project and John Krasinski’s A Quiet Place makes use
of CG imagery for visual effects and the films
antagonist which makes the projects similar in that
regard.
• Both projects make use of a relatively simple sound
design to create an eerie feeling for the audience.
Although A Quiet Place’s sound design is of a much
higher quality; both projects are trying to achieve a
similar effect from their sound designs.
• Both projects make use a pretty dark lighting style
found in a lot of horror films. This is to try and create
a uncertain atmosphere for the viewer as the
darkness makes it more challenging to see any
danger.
A Quiet Place (2018)
• Differences:
• John Krasinski’s A Quiet Place is a box office film
which provides the production with a much larger
budget and time frame. Because of this, industry
standard visual effects artists will have been apart of
the film’s production team making the final product
of a much higher quality opposed to my animation.
• A Quiet Place has extremely good animation quality
that I could only hope that I ever reach that standard,
never mind on my first ever animation project. Due
to the greater animation standards, John Krasinski’s A
Quiet Place is much more immersive for the viewer
as the animation is never jarring/taking away from
the rest of the film.
• A Quiet Place uses a variety of lighting for their
different scenes, there are a lot of light and a lot of
dark scenes which always keeps the viewers on their
toes as the light scene provide a safer feel and the
dark scenes the opposite. My animation just uses a
lot of dark lighting.

25. Technical Qualities
My Animation: (YouTube Link) A Quiet Place (2018)
Dark Lighting Setup
CG Imagery

26. Technical Qualities
• Throughout the course of this project, I used a variety of different challenging techniques as my project was created
fully within 3D software, which in itself can get very technical. I want to use this document to highlight some
challenges I faced and how I solved those issues.
• From the get go, I was relatively new to 3D, and I still am upon completing this project, but in the beginning of
production, this was a rather large challenge for me as it was my first ever time in Blender due to the unfortunate
circumstance with Maya at College. This lead to a lot of panic as I worried if I would even be able to complete anything
to a decent standard at all. Once I started modelling I encountered a few issue with Blender as I knew none of
Blender’s interface and controls, to get around this issue to allow me to start modelling my assets for this project, I
spent a day or so messing around inside of Blender and watching tutorials to get myself familiar with this new
software.
After modelling some of my initial assets, I started to texture a few of my assets to see how they would look. I had
absolutely no idea how to texture anything in Blender. I found a tutorial for basic texturing inside of Blender and soon
picked it up and got around this issue. I found
an extremely useful shortcut to make texturing
a lot easier. CTRL + SHIFT + T allows me to apply
downloaded texture files to an object with ease.
All you have to do is download the texture that
you want to use, then you just go into Blenders
shading tab and use the shortcut. This brings up
a file explorer and allows you to select the
texture’s files and Blender automatically creates
a texture node setup for you.

27. Technical Qualities
• I then wanted to add the grass and other types of foliage to my scene. I had a
good idea of how to create grass in Blender as id imagined it would be pretty
similar to how you would do it in Maya. I started with a plane and made it really
thin and long, I then used proportional editing to create a grass blade like
shape. Using this, I duplicated the blade I had just created and slightly edited
the shape using rotation, scale, and more proportional editing to create a more
random effect to my grass. I then continued to repeat this process till I had a
few different grass patch collections.
• However, I was not sure how to create trees in Blender as they are much more
complex than grass collections. I had a look on YouTube and discovered a free
plugin for Blender that caught my eye. The plugin was called MTree and it
allows you to create a collection of trees with ease using the premade tree
samples that you can easily alter to your liking. I used this plugin to create a
collection of trees for variety in my scene.
• After modelling all my foliage assets, I was unsure how to scatter them across
my scene as I knew manually placing and distributing them across the large
plane I had modelled would take too long. I had a look around and found two
options for this to chose from. One was a plugin called Gscatter and the other
option was to use Blender’s built in particle systems. I decided to use the
particle systems as they're already built into Blender and I felt that I knew how
to use the particle system. I then changed the particle system to a hair system
to attach the particles to my plane, then selected my tree collection and altered
the settings until I had a number of trees in my scene I was happy with. I then
did the same process for the grass collection.

28. Technical Qualities
• Moving on from this, once I had a layout of my scene and had everything how I
wanted it to look with the majority of textures added, I needed to start lighting my
scene to see how everything would look with the lights and textures, once rendered.
Again, I wasn’t too sure how to do any nice lighting as I didn’t know the light sources
inside of Blender. However, I did know about HDRIs from previous research into VFX
and 3D, plus my limited experience in Maya. With this in mind, I went over to
YouTube to find out how HDRIs are applied in Blender. After following the tutorial, I
had a HDRI in my scene which provided some very basic lighting.
• I then started watching some basic lighting tutorials for beginners in Blender. This gave me and idea of the different
types of light sources in Blende and what they can do. I then started to scatter some basic lights around my scene
which started to make things more visible. I played around with a bunch of different lights for a while and finally
settled on 3. However, it still did not achieve the look I was after, everything seemed a little too bright, even where
the light sources were not too close to. I realised that this was to do with my HDRI, I then started to play with some
different HDRIs and changing the strength using nodes in Blender, but nothing provided me with the look I wanted
to achieve. I then decided to just use a one colour background (a really dark blue) which allowed me to achieve the
lighting style that I wanted for this scene.

29. Technical Qualities
• After I had a relatively decent lighting rig for my scene, I felt there was still something missing that I wanted to add to
the outdoors part of m project. I felt with it being in a forest within the horror genre, I found from my research that a
lot of similar scenes have fog in the forest, adding to the eerie atmosphere. I wanted to the incorporate this into my
own scene so I looked up some more tutorials on YouTube. I decided to add the fog to my scene using volumetrics. I
did this by creating a large cube mesh surrounding my entire outdoor scene, then I altered the volumetric settings of
the cube, I lowered the density and increased the anisotropy until it created the fog like effect I was after. This was a
pretty challenging process for me as I had never worked with anything like this prior to starting this part of the
project but I'm glad I got around it and I was really happy with how my scene was starting to look.

30. Technical Qualities
• Once I had finished modelling and texturing my scene I got round to one of the biggest technical challenges of this
entire project. Rendering. I was completely in the unknown with rendering inside of Blender, especially for animation
renders. I played around with a few settings in the Eevee render engine and hit render to see how it was looking. I
then discovered a huge issue, Eevee was rendering my animation at around 1 frame every 2 minutes. This was a
huge issue as I was running out of time and I knew that I wouldn’t have chance to change anything if anything went
wrong if I stuck with these render times. I then played around with some settings some more and managed to get
the render time down to around 1 frame every 15 seconds, which was a huge improvement and I was really happy
with how I solved this render issue. I then set the render off and 3 days later, with some minor tweaks in between, I
finally had my finished render, ready to be imported into After Effects.
• Everything inside of After Effects such as colour correction, compiling the renders, audio editing and time remapping
to make animation a little bit smoother was all relatively simple for me as I have a pretty good knowledge of After
Effects due to prior experience.
• I'm super happy with how I handle all the issues I encountered during the production stage of this project, especially
for it being my first time using Blender. I always managed to highlight my problems and solve the issues by myself
with the use of the internet, which really helped me to learn how to avoid making these mistakes that cause some of
the issues that a ran into.

31. Aesthetic Qualities

32. Aesthetic Qualities
• I am relatively happy with how my final piece looks, I think that some creative decisions were poor and could have
been altered to better the outcome of this piece. Some aspects that I'm really happy with are the textures that I
found and implemented into my scene. For example, I think that the plastered walls work really well in the bunker
scene and that’s exactly how id imagine that type of scene to look, although the walls are slightly more reflective
than I would have liked them to be in the final render, I did try my best to stop this from happening but I think the
settings for the texture are still just slightly off. Despite this I do think it still works and looks good. I am also a big fan
of the texture that I chose for the floor inside of the bunker. I really like how reflective the floor texture is as it reflets
the door lights as well as the ceiling filament lamps adding a really nice extra detail to my scene. I think that
reflections are such a simple detail to add yet they go such a long way in improving the look and realism of your
scene.

33. Aesthetic Qualities
• I also really like how the outside forest area textures look as well. I think that the combination of the grass particles
with the texture for the plane that I found work really well in creating the type of ground that you would find in a
forest. I'm really happy with how the outside area looks considering I decided not to texture many of the trees to
save myself render time. Despite not texturing many of the trees in my scene, I still think that they look good and
serve the purpose they're there for.
• I also like how the fog in my scene added to the lights and helped to diffuse the lights around the scene. I think that
adding the fog to my scene was probably the best creative decision that I made during this project as it really
brought everything together and helped to add so much more to my scene. However, I am slightly disappointed with
some of the lighting throughout my final render, I think that the outside scene is slightly too light and the bunker
scene is probably a little bit too dark as it can sometime be difficult to see what's happening inside of the bunker at
times. If I had more time to fix this, I would go back and change the intensity of many of my light sources until I
found a combination of settings that worked or my scene.

34. Aesthetic Qualities
• I am also really happy with colour correction that I made using an After Effects plugin called Magic Bullet Looks. I
think that it helps to reduce the brightness of the outside scene a lot as I felt that was an issue previously. It also uses
a collection of different effects that help to add to the horror feel as I researched into colour correction found inside
of horror films. I think that this helped my final product immensely as it’s a lot easier to control the colours of
everything in post compared to within the 3D software. I just tried to get the colours as close as possible to what I
wanted it to look like in the 3D software then I could tweak/correct all the colours in post using colour correction
effects within After Effects. I was pretty confident with my abilities with colour correction as I have a lot of
experience with it and have studied the basics of Lumetri colour to help with my colour correction.
Before: After:

35. Aesthetic Qualities
• Despite all this, I do wish that I had more time for this project as I'm sure that everything would be dramatically
different to how it is now if I had more time to work on this. I am a fan of everything that I have listed prior to this
point but I do believe that everything can be improved upon. I’m sure that if I spent more time I could have found
better textures or used procedurals to create textures specifically for this project.
• I also believe that my grass is not the best, after completing this project I found many ways to make the grass inside
of Blender look a lot more realistic and alive. You can use colour ramps and hue and saturation to create randomness
in the colour of the grass. This would have allowed me to have different shade of green in the grass to make it look a
lot more realistic. I also could have added dry/dead grass using orange/yellow colours to give further randomness in
the grass to make it that bit more realistic. I also discovered upon completing this project that I could have added
wind simulations to my foliage particle systems so that they looked as if they were actually in the scene and alive.
This would have allowed the particle systems to interact with wind as they would in the real world and provide some
movement to the particle systems. This would have made everything feel much more realistic and improved my
scene massively if I new this prior to this project.
Before: After:

36. Audience Appeal
• I believe that I have appealed to my target audience through the colour
palette that I used throughout this project. I made sure to follow the
horror genre characteristics by using a desaturated colour palette. Whilst
researching the horror genre, I found that a lot of cold, desaturated
colours were used. Also, in my target audience surveys and
questionnaires, I found that the majority of my target audience enjoyed
a dark colour scheme. So, for my final major project, I decided upon
using a similar colour scheme for my own work as I knew it was a colour
scheme enjoyed by my target audience.
• Whist researching my target audience, I discovered first hand from my survey’s, that my target audience enjoys
when tension is built up in their horror films. I decided to incorporate this into my own piece. I did this by having
lots of sudden sounds in my sound design such as: twigs snapping, owl’s tooting and general ambient noise, in an
otherwise calm environment to keep the audience interested to see where this tension leads. Another way that I
did this is by having nothing major until the end of the video, this way, my target audience knows that it’s a horror
film and because of this will be expecting something scary, which they wont get until the end of the video, this way
my audience I hooked throughout the video.

37. Audience Appeal
• I also discovered from my audience research that my target audience enjoys a minimalistic and realistic sound
design. It was pretty split between the two types of sound designs. Going into sound editing towards the end of
production, I decide to try and go for a sound design in between realistic and minimalistic hoping this way it
couldn't go wrong. I think this will appeal to my target audience as the sound design wont take them away from
the rest of the video like it would if it was something that they didn't enjoy. I used general ambient sounds, like
those that you would find in a minimalistic sound design, I then backed these sounds up with some mor realistic
sounds such as twigs breaking under the characters foot, wildlife sounds, walking sounds and the buzzing sounds
an old light found in an abandoned bunker would create. I believe that this will help my project appeal to my
target audience as they will be able to enjoy the sound design that supports the visual aspects of my project.
• From my interviews with my target audience, I discovered that my target audience thinks a short horror film
should be between 2-3 minutes. When animating my camera during the production stage of this project, I kept
this in mind and made sure to pace the animation so that my final cut would be within that time frame. This will
help appeal to my target audience as there's enough time to allow tension to build but not too much time as to
the point that my target audience starts to lose interest.
• Although in my questionaries, the majority of my target audience responded with disliking fog, I decided to go
against this and incorporate fog into my final piece. I discovered from my research of the horror genre that fog is
in almost all horror films and helps to add to the uneasy, cold atmosphere you will find in horror films. With this
in mind, I decided to go against my questionnaire responses as I cant use those 10 responses to represent my
entire target audience. I thought that people apart of my target audience but not apart of the questionnaire
responses, might enjoy fog in horror films so I decided to bring it into my final piece.

38. Peer
Feedback

39. Feedback 1 – Charlie Stevens
• What did you like about the product?
• I liked the visuals, as I found it to be very aesthetically pleasing.
• The sounds of walking on the grass and general woods sounds helped build a nice atmosphere.
• Seems very realistic, which is very cool for a 3D animated project.
• What improvements could have been made to the
product?
• I would say that the sounds in the basement and going down the stairs are a bit out of sync, and
don’t really match to the area very well.
• The texture of the walls in the basement is not the same quality as all of the other detailed bits.
• Maybe add some tension strings or subtle background music?

40. Feedback 2
• What did you like about the product?
- The scenario is very well made, the soundtrack is subtle but in my opinion that is better because
it is more scary that way, you just keep waiting for something to happen (so scary in fact I almost
didn’t wanted to watch it!)
- I liked the red light in the sky, gave it a mysterious and dangerous look
• What improvements could have been made to the
product?
• The only thing I would say I would add is a shadow in the distance or maybe even a jump scare,
but apart from that, I think it is a perfect horror environment!

41. Feedback 3
• What did you like about the product?
• Incredibly photo-realistic with multiple different environments that show off different
aspects of texturing and detail.
• The camera bobbing massively helps to add immersion.
• The movement upon hearing the owl sound and the sound itself work very well in tandem.
• There is a tidy storyline that is well-suited for the piece and doesn’t take away from the
main focus. It’s easy to follow and keeps you enticed by what’s going to happen next.
• The interior was very interesting stylistically as it isn’t something you’d necessarily expect
to find in a forest or woods.
• The lighting is very movie-esque.-
• What improvements could have been made to the
product?
• The sound when walking down the stairs might be a little too quiet.
• Same with the ambient sounds of the woods, there could be a bit more going on in the
background (chirping or wind or grass rustling)

42. Peer Feedback Summary
• What do you agree with from your peer feedback?
• A common point that was made to me was that the sound effects going down into the bunker
are often out of sync and can be off putting from the rest of the sound design. I completely agree
with this after watching it again now that it has been mentioned. I never noticed this while
working on the sound design, in future I will make sure to pay more attention to this.
• In feedback 2, it was suggested that I should add a jump scare into the video. I agree with this
and wish I could but due to the time restraints, this was challenging. This was my original plan to
include jump scares but due to the circumstances, I wasn’t able to follow this plan and add in
some jump scares.
• It was mentioned that the textures on the walls inside of the bunker are not as nice looking as
the rest of the textures that I used. I agree with this and I mentioned it in a previous slide of my
evaluation. I wish that I could have found a better texture for the walls seen as though they're
such a big part of the final product. The reflection of the texture on the walls makes it look like
it’s a lower quality texture but it is actually the same quality. All textures were downloaded in 8K.
• It was also suggested that the audio is pretty quiet at points. I also agree with this as some points
are definitely not as loud as I intended for them to be and can take away from the overall sound
design. I wish I had left myself some more time for sound design.

43. Peer Feedback Summary
• What do you disagree with from your peer
feedback?
• In my feedback someone mentioned that my final product looked photo-realistic. I definitely
disagree with this as many of my models are low poly to try save myself some time on the final
render, this lead to assets looking less realistic in the final cut but it was a sacrifice that I had to
make in order for renders to be produced in a shorter time frame.
• It was also mentioned that the animation for this project is smooth which I disagree with, this
was my first project ever inside of 3D software that I have animated and because of this, I think
that the camera animation is really jarring and can often be off putting from the rest of the
environment. I didn’t help myself with this as I left myself a small amount of time for animating
which meant that the camera animation was rushed towards the end of the production stage. In
the future, I will make sure to time manage myself better to ensure I can create a smoother
animation.
• It was mentioned that the sounds in the bunker don’t really work well with the environment
which I disagree with, I think the sounds work well its just that they're slightly out of sync as well
as a little bit too quiet which is maybe why they thought the sounds didn’t work.

44. Peer Feedback Summary
• If I had more time to work on this project I would have definitely made more of an attempt to
pay attention to the sound design as it’s a very important part of my project. I've noticed that its
rather easy to identify I sound that doesn’t sound right and can often be picked up by the
audience, taking them away from the rest of the video. In the future I want to make sure I spend
more time working on the sound design for my projects to ensure that it complements the
visuals and is not distracting/taking away from the rest of the project.
• I would also spend more time working with textures to ensure that none off the textures in my
scene stick out and catch the audiences attention too much. If a textures doesn’t look right or
doesn’t represent the real world well, the audience will pick up on this and just like sound
design, it can take them away from the video and ruin the experience. I will try to ensure that all
my textures are of the highest quality and work well with the rest o the textures in the scene, to
create an appealing environment for the audience to enjoy and appreciate.
• Although this wasn’t mentioned in peer feedback surprisingly, after watching my own project
again, I noticed that the bunker sequence is really dark compared to what I saw whilst making
the sequence and editing inside of After Effects. In the future I need to make sure that I check
the rendered files as well as the files once uploaded as the codec can often change the colours in
a video. I think how dark the bunker sequence is takes away from the rest of my video as it
makes the second half of the video quite challenging to see.