Overall thoughts...

Well after our presentation, I feel we did okay...

The 'panel' seemed to like our ideas at the start but towards the end they felt as if we were attacking Brainient. This was not the case, we just feel the interface could be more user friendly and maybe similar to software students use already like the familiar Adobe interface etc. Over all I think we did okay as a group, but most of it was done my only two of us, instead of six.

Presentation slides

Solution?

Okay to today Brainient have suggested that they create the animation section of our pitch and overlay it to our video as this will be the only way it can be done for our presentation. We will add the text, add the links and everything ourselves. Big thanks to them for sorting us out!

Here is a screen shot of our animation put over our video:

Email, after email, after email, after email...

Okay so we have been emailing the guys at Brainient back and fourth for a few days now and no resolution has come up as of yet. We are still playing around with the software to try and get it to work so all hope isn't lost yet!

Software Tutorial

So the guys at Brainient were really helpful and made a tutorial just for us to try and help us make .swf files in flash which will be compatible in the Brainient software. Here is the tutorial they made for us:



Unfortunately it still hasn't worked, as the animation doesn't play when we preview the video.

Research time

Right, so it has been a week or so and we haven't had much from other members of the group, so I have decided to do some research into the different areas so that in the worst case scenario that no one does anything in our group, we still have some stuff to put in our presentation and its not all shambles! This research can be seen in the 'Animation Industry' slide and 'Showreels' slide of our presentation which I will upload screen shots of later.

Group Roles

These are only rough roles. Myself and Nick have taken lead roles in this project already as feedback and communication from other members can be lacking at times and we really want to push for this project to get done soon. Roles in the group are as follows:

JOE - Create the click-through website for a fake company that could have been behind the film. Just on a blog website or something but so it looks kind of professional, with a banner and a consistent theme etc.

ED - Narrow down our target audience. It's not going to be enough to say "young industry professionals" in our presentation so it needs to be much more specific: average age, location, what qualifications they may have, if they are working as a freelance artist or as part of an aspiring team, where they would hope to get to within the industry, why they would find brainient useful and what they would hope to get out of using the software, etc. Just go nuts on it, the more detailed the better.

Nick - Keep in contact with the guys from Brianient and get the actual product finished. When it's done there will be an animated SWF file placed over the films credits which will act as a click through link to another website that Joe will be creating.

TOM - Market research. See if you can find out who Brainients main competitors are, what advantages and disadvantages they have again Brainient. How other clients have used Brainient to their benefit, etc. Don't worry if Brainient turns out to have almost no advantages, not really scared of treading on any toes in this project because the software is a piece of shit.

BOGDAN - Do some research into potential candidates that we could market the software at. I know that Ed is going to be covering our target audience but maybe look towards figures to back up the target audience. So for example: how many animation/media graduates a year walk in to jobs after degrees compared to those who will go free lance or start a company themselves? Maybe look at how many small production companies there are in the London and get a rough number of how many freelance artists based in London too so that we really know the size of our market. Might be a bit tricky but it would be really useful.

MOSES - Research viral videos. Find out why companies would choose to put animation/production work on the internet and get some examples of some popular animation youtube shorts. Get some examples of really successful viral videos too, and decipher what makes some flop and others excel. Our audience will utilise the fact that youtube is a gateway to a world audience so it's really important, and we can back up our entire approach to selling brainient with this information.

Software Tests

I created an account asap and jumped right into the software. Straight away I uploaded my film and got to work. I tried to upload an animation to overlay on it for our idea, but it didnt seem to want to work. I had exported it from after effects as an .swf file which it says is compatible with the Brainient software. With that not working, I went ahead and worked on the text for our click through links. That seemed to work all fine so this part was done.

Me and Nick wanted to get the practical part done at the beginning so we had time to research and put our presentation together and come up with some really good, strong points for our pitch.

In regards to the .swf files not working, I emailed Emi at Brainient and the reply i got was:


Hi Joseph,

I'm cc'ing our CTO Andrei, who can help with any technical issues on the platform.

Best,
Emi

 

Later that day i heard back from Andrei Baragan suggesting potential errors that may have happened and why they did. Turns out you cant export from Adobe After Effects, you have to use Adobe Flash.

Initial ideas

Right, so myself and Nick want to kick things off really quickly because we have loads of animation work to be doing for our course. Last term we produced a short film for our post production unit which we were really proud of. As we are on an animation course, we thought we could do something to help budding animators and find a way in which we could market this software to that sort of audience.

We came up with the idea of having a click though link/animation at the end of short films or showreel's, so that people can click the link and it takes them to the website/blog for the individual or company behind the films/showreel's. This gives a greater chance of people getting hired as they can have all their contact information on the websites and can have their other work on there too, so people aren't limited to viewing on video by someone, they can just simply click though and see all of their work at once.

We came up with the idea for our film we made in the previous term. It was about creatures attacking Ravensbourne College. We could have an animation over the video of the creature and a link to the blog that documented how we made it etc. We would make this animation ourselves and upload it to the Brainient software and overlay it on the film and add links in etc. This is something any animator could do really easily so we will run with this idea. We could easily advertise the College with this idea too.

So our plan is really to advertise the brainient software as a way of getting audiences to immediately be able to access an artists catalogue of work and to instantly engage/contact them in an interesting and easy way, which is useful to those who use youtube as a method of getting their work seen in an industry which is notoriously competitive.

Here we go then...

Right so the first lecture went off with a bang! None of my group turned up, giving me no one to work with for the tasks that were set that session. Great. After the first session I sent emails about, tried to look for my group on Facebook but I had no reply's or anything in 10 days so I decided all hope was gone. I spoke to my course tutor because I wanted to get ideas and group work started asap. I was swapped into group J! Now we had to come up with an idea to pitch to Brainient for them to sell their product onto other companies. Confusing at first, but we soon picked up the gist of it and set to work.

Project Brief:

As a team you will take on the role of a marketing department, assign yourselves roles, divide tasks amongst yourselves, set deadlines and meet up regularly outside of class in order to manage the project successfully. Suggestions of roles can be found on the VLE. Please note however that each team member is expected to have an overview of all aspects of the project with research findings discussed within the group.

You will explore issues, challenges and opportunities facing the company in their specific niche. You will research the company itself, their competition and their current and potential market using techniques such as SWOT. You will look at macro trends and wider issues that may influence developments within the niche market in which the company is operating.

We will look at ways of segmenting a market and explore some counterintuitive realities when positioning oneself within it. You will explore whether there are gaps in the market and whether the company offering can be commercialized within new contexts.

Having become familiar with the businesses’ current positioning and having researched the many aspects that impact its potential you will come up with branding and promotion strategies, which you will pitch to the entrepreneur. The categories/ scenarios for this will be set by the tutor in collaboration with the entrepreneur and may change from formative to summative assessment at their discretion to result in more specialized and potent pitches.