M2 - Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats

 SWOT

SWOT is Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats and allows directors/artists to analyse their work to their audience before release. A strength to my animation in relation to my audience is that it will contain bright colours and bold fonts, which will mean my animation will be aimed at children. A weakness to my animation is that it might not be educational to children as I will have to communicate through the body language of characters. An opportunity to my animation is that as an animator, the characters could be used in future animations and could re-use work already completed. A threat to my animation is that topics discussed could be offensive to specific audiences, which could decrease overall ratings and could be bad for my reputation. Also another threat is my skillset as I have never used animation tools and the tools used will be very low level as I learn how to use them.

Strengths

My animation is strong as it is aimed at a young audience, which gives it a 'U' rating from BBFC. It allows me to target at a broader audience and maximise the success of the product. Also, the animation is short so it wouldnt typically cost alot of money, however my budget is zero so i am using software and hardware already available to me. When planning the animation, I made sure to follow the client brief by meeting the colour schemes and font styles. Also, by creating many pre-production documents, i can ensure my animation will have a strong structure.

A strength to cross-platform opportunities is that it allows the studios to publish their work on mulitple platforms such as mobile, web and desktop. This allows them to reach a wider audience and increase their potential customer base. Disney uses cross-platform strategioes to reach a wider audience and maximise their success, which includes created content for multiple platforms such as TV, movies, streaming services and mobile apps. They also use cross-promotion to advertise their products and services across multiple platforms. Also, Disney has invested in technology to create a unified user experience across all their platforms allowing customers to access content and services from any device.

Weaknesses

There a few weaknesses to my animation that I have to consider during the production process. One of the weaknesses of my animation is that the target audience are young and might not understand the animation or may not find it entertaining, which i can try to correct by using plenty of pre-production documents to correctly plan the narrative. Furthermore, there are language barriers as the characters are english speaking. This limits the amount of people that can watch as non-Enlgish speaking people will not understand and may choose not to watch.

A weakness of cross-platform opportunities is that they can be difficult to maintain and update as different platforms require different versions of the same software. Also, cross-platform opportunities can be limited by the capabilities of the different platforms as some features may not be available on all platforms.

A downside to Disney using cross platform is that it can be difficult to maintain consistency across all platforms , as different platforms may have different capabilities. Additionally, it can be difficult to ensure that all platforms are up to date with the latest content and features.

Opportunities

Creating a high-level animation can create many opportunities for me in the future. A major opportunity i may be given is the chance to work with a company to create more animations and gain knowledge within the industry. This will open many doors and create new job opportunities to put me in the best position. Also as the brief was set by Club Europe, they may enjoy my film and ask to create more animations for them in the future, or create designs and illustrations to contribute to their animations.

An opportunistic feature of using cross-platform is the ability to develop applications that can be used on multiple platforms such as Windows, Mac, iOS and Android. This allows creators of all kinds to reach a wider audience which will increase profit. Additionally, cross-platform development can reduce development costs and time as they can re-use assets and resources across many platforms. Also, there can be more jobs created through cross platform usage because it increases the demand for developers who can create applications that can be used on multiple platforms and will also require server maintenance.

Threats

I have multiple threats of my animation that could limit the success. I have a deadline to stick to however the production may take me a while so i need to constantly work on the animation to ensure it is completed on time. Also, the animation will take me a while to create because I have no experience in animation software. Also, my animation is a children's animation, which may have other animations similar to mine online so it is important I do thorough research to prevent this from happening.

A threat to cross-platform usage is the potential for compatibility issues between different platforms. Also, there is a risk of an increased development cost due to the need to develop and maintain multiple versions of the same application.