Question 1: This part of the evaluation asks you to explain what examples of 'real' products that you have looked at have influenced your final designs. This needs to be done to explain what you wanted to create for your own videogame, print advert and front cover design. For each, you will need to include a range of examples, either as screen shots or in the case of the game, or perhaps as an embedded YouTube version of the game, done as a play-through style video? For each example you need to explain the specific, technical things that you've done, as well as explaining what influences you had or where your ideas came from. For each section, once you have explained what you were influenced by you will then explain how these ideas fit in with your own ideas and final products.
For your game, using the 9 shot grid as key moments from your game is an excellent idea that allows you to communicate about a range of ideas and production techniques. This is an example of what this could look like from a music video:
Again, you need to offer a quick explanation as to what each square shows an how/why you created them.
Some good examples of question 1 can be seen here:
http://chloestevenson.wordpress.com/2010/04/23/a2-g324-evaluation-of-music-video/ and http://musicvideoalexanderwhitcombe.blogspot.co.uk/2009/11/nine-key-frames.html http://musicvideoalexanderwhitcombe.blogspot.co.uk/2009/11/evaluation-task-one-part-two.html
I particularly like this evaluation question 1, as it takes examples from existing products (again, from music videos) and then compares them to the actual product that the candidate has made herself. This is a really nice and immediate way of showing how your product meets things that already exist.
This will be a long blog post with much detail in it. Use the examples above as a guide if unsure.
Question 2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
This question asks you to think about what the point of your work is and how well you managed to achieve what you set out to achieve.
Is your game like any of the game that influenced yours? Does your game include any features or techniques that you wanted to use, such as ones that you identified in your research? Does your game match the target audience in the way that you wanted to?
Don't forget about the technical side of things-did your use of graphics, sound, props or planning of the level help to create an exciting game that works, for example?
You also need to think about how your other products combine and work with your game to promote the game as something that you want people to buy. How well have you managed to make your magazine advert look like it's part of the same campaign as your box art for example? Have you used a feature or technique in one product that you've used in another that helps to make all of your products look 'similar', like they have an identity? What could you do better? How could you create a clear identity for your products by changing them? What sorts of things might you do differently when creating the 'whole package'?
Make sure that there are plenty of clear and obvious links and evaluations between products. Here are some good examples, but obviously bear in mind that these are from music video examples...
Though it doesn't go into a huge amount of detail.
A better version that uses more interesting technology would be a Prezi such as this:
Of which there is a link to here: http://prezi.com/sp-itp45hvrx/question-2-how-effective-is-the-combination-of-your-main-p/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy
Question 3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?
Feedback is tricky, ideally you'd get a range of people to both play your game and to also look at your final products. Getting people to play isn't really an option, hence my feedback a while ago. I can't feedback to you on your final products on your blog, as it will then be clear that your feedback has only come from me. SO, this means that you WILL need to get feedback from people on your final two products.
The best way to do this is to get some people to look at your final products and then ask them to complete a questionnaire about it and their feelings of it. Survey Monkey is useful for this.
Then you will need to evaluate what you have learnt based on this feedback.
The kinds of questions you need to ask include the basics such as 'would you buy this game based on this advert/box art? What stands out? Who do you think the target audience is? How much would you pay for the game based on the advert/box art etc? Does it look professional? Etc. etc.
From this, you then need to consider things like: Was the feedback positive? Was it negative apart from one specific area? What was the audience's favourite aspect of your game (if you can remember?!)? What did they like specifically about your box art/advert?
What is crucial here is not to simply explain what your audience told you about your products, but more about what you learnt from this feedback and how this would change or affect your choices if you were to make these products again.
Use graphs and charts to explain your findings. Perhaps ask for feedback via twitter, instagram or on your blog. Use screenshots of their replies and include these in a blog post to show your feedback.
Some useful examples can be found below. Again, these are examples for a music video, but scored VEY highly and you should look to get ideas from these.
This example shows a wonderful range of techologies and varieties of responses: http://rominamusicvideo.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/evaluation-question-three.html
but as you can seen in the link below, paper questionnaires are perfectly fine, though not effective in showing off your range of media skills.
A more interesting suggestion would be to create a director's commentary which includes clips from the game and vox-pop reactions (mini-interviews, 10 seconds or so) from the audience.
Question 4: How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
This final question asks you to consider what technology has allowed you to do in the making of the game AND the final product, as well as the research AND this evaluation.
The key thing with this question is NOT to simply list every form of technology you've used, instead to explain how and why you chose certain things and what you did when you used these. You should have plenty to talk about as you should have used a large varieties of products, apps, programs and websites, so go through and highlight the key differences and how each one suits the task.
This question should be by far the easiest for you to evaluate, remembering that this IS an evaluation meaning that you need to draw conclusions and suggestions for improvement if you were to do this again and crucially, showing what you learned.
Have look here http://rominamusicvideo.blogspot.co.uk/ for an excellent blog (it scored an A* if I recall) and the evaluation is well worth looking at and reading as it shows a really good insight, great level of detail and crucially, constantly compares her work with products that already exist, explaining how she created things and why/how she changed them and developed them throughout.
Finally, this how-to guide from another teacher goes into a LOT of detail for students working on a music video https://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/44103017?access_key=key-532n4jjlv6aoya1dtg7 . It's really useful though, as it shows the kind of detail and level of work you need to put into to get a good grade. It shows how you can demonstrate how you developed/worked your game to a point that you were happy with and give examples that show the different technologies you used.
If you've got any questions, issues, problems or general worries, drop me a mail, tweet me or leave a comment on here. I'll try and get back to you asap in all instances, usually and hopefully within 48 hours.
