Monday 15 February 2010
Wednesday 3 February 2010
Evaluation...
EVALUATION
VISUAL COMMUNICATION
First and foremost, when this project first started out, I decided to look back at the previous Communication Technology brief from last year; a project about Social Networking, and trying to understand peoples fascinations with it. This didn’t work out, and I ended up disliking it more; and so for this project I wanted to do something which captured my attention, and that I would not end up condemning it later on.
I changed my mind a lot with the choice of topic, at first wanting to look in depth at hand crafts and becoming a self-sufficient artist. However then I remembered the interest that I had developed with video in my self-initiated brief before summer, this therefore led me to the video group, and before I knew it, I was somehow in the animation group, of which I am still not sure of how I ended up here, however I am very glad I did.
At the beginning of the summer, I made a conscious decision to make the most of the course, and its facilities and try and do as much that I am interested in, as possible, and animation was one of those interests.
The project has been an eye-opener to me, it is one, which made me realise, that as independent as I am, I am also able to work pretty well as part of a team. I do feel that the partnership that developed between myself and Hayley, is one which was incredibly beneficial, not in just finding someone that has similar interests and that we would work together relatively easily; but in the fact that we where able to really get more of a glimpse than most, as to what it would be like to be a professional animator, because as I have learned extensively, it is not a profession which one would be expected to work alone.
A few of the skills which I have learned about in this project, include, stop-frame, drawn, cut-out and cell animation; I have found developing these skills priceless, and I do hope that my works in the future, I will somehow get to experiment with animation once more. One of the key things that I enjoy about animation, is the magic of being able to give an inanimate object, such as a line, a shoe or a piece of a dough, a life force of its own, it was almost as if the objects where dictating what I did to them, and not the other way around. One of the key things that this has taught me, was whilst doing a claymation, myself and Hayley where working on a live brief, an advert for Blu Tack; and even though the project took its own format and left the brief behind, the final piece took a hell of a lot of work, considering the final outcome is a mere, 1:05 second video. The amount of changes we had to go through with set and figure design was extensive, and the amount of hours allocated to this supposedly easy project, built up, and took over from us having a lot of time to do our own things as well, until quite late into the project; it is because of this, that in the future, I would set aside a lot of time in larger chunks, as I feel that we achieved more, when working this way, rather than doing a couple of hours, and wasting a lot of that time, setting up the camera and scene, to fit with what we had ended on previously.
This project has been of great benefit to me, as it has been one, that has finally convinced me to change my ways, although I have done a fair chunk of self initiated work in this brief, I do feel that I have done too much conventional research, whereby reading into things too much, and not doing them enough, or as much as I could have, and it is because of this, that I have decided that I will for the next project set myself the task of many short briefs, in order to add pressure to myself, to have work completed, and to not spend too much time stuck on reading about them. Also, another problem I had on this, was sticking to keeping a Blog, I have never wanted or sought the need to have one, and so to be told that it was compulsory, made me not want to do it even more, and so I would update it irregularly, and keep a YouTube playlist, and reflective diary instead, however coming to the end of the project, I see the reasoning behind the blog, and will at least attempt to stick to it for the next project, hopefully another lesson well-learned.
I have also learned a great deal, from juggling my work, with my part time job, attending university, volunteering and trying to maintain a social life; I have learned that although this forced me to look at my time and use it more wisely and effectively, the concept was better than what actually happened, I found myself exhausted and getting quite ill, sometimes too much, is too much; and I will take this lesson with me as I progress, I feel that sometime in the near future, it maybe necessary to give up my part time job (and find another means of making money) and also to cut down on a lot of my wasted social time, creating a work/play balance that will be more fitting.
Finally, I do feel that this project has been extremely useful, not so much in the building of a portfolio terms, but in terms of gaining knowledge about the animation, and the many different forms it takes; but principally knowledge about bettering me as an artist, yet encouraging me to keep experimenting.
VISUAL COMMUNICATION
First and foremost, when this project first started out, I decided to look back at the previous Communication Technology brief from last year; a project about Social Networking, and trying to understand peoples fascinations with it. This didn’t work out, and I ended up disliking it more; and so for this project I wanted to do something which captured my attention, and that I would not end up condemning it later on.
I changed my mind a lot with the choice of topic, at first wanting to look in depth at hand crafts and becoming a self-sufficient artist. However then I remembered the interest that I had developed with video in my self-initiated brief before summer, this therefore led me to the video group, and before I knew it, I was somehow in the animation group, of which I am still not sure of how I ended up here, however I am very glad I did.
At the beginning of the summer, I made a conscious decision to make the most of the course, and its facilities and try and do as much that I am interested in, as possible, and animation was one of those interests.
The project has been an eye-opener to me, it is one, which made me realise, that as independent as I am, I am also able to work pretty well as part of a team. I do feel that the partnership that developed between myself and Hayley, is one which was incredibly beneficial, not in just finding someone that has similar interests and that we would work together relatively easily; but in the fact that we where able to really get more of a glimpse than most, as to what it would be like to be a professional animator, because as I have learned extensively, it is not a profession which one would be expected to work alone.
A few of the skills which I have learned about in this project, include, stop-frame, drawn, cut-out and cell animation; I have found developing these skills priceless, and I do hope that my works in the future, I will somehow get to experiment with animation once more. One of the key things that I enjoy about animation, is the magic of being able to give an inanimate object, such as a line, a shoe or a piece of a dough, a life force of its own, it was almost as if the objects where dictating what I did to them, and not the other way around. One of the key things that this has taught me, was whilst doing a claymation, myself and Hayley where working on a live brief, an advert for Blu Tack; and even though the project took its own format and left the brief behind, the final piece took a hell of a lot of work, considering the final outcome is a mere, 1:05 second video. The amount of changes we had to go through with set and figure design was extensive, and the amount of hours allocated to this supposedly easy project, built up, and took over from us having a lot of time to do our own things as well, until quite late into the project; it is because of this, that in the future, I would set aside a lot of time in larger chunks, as I feel that we achieved more, when working this way, rather than doing a couple of hours, and wasting a lot of that time, setting up the camera and scene, to fit with what we had ended on previously.
This project has been of great benefit to me, as it has been one, that has finally convinced me to change my ways, although I have done a fair chunk of self initiated work in this brief, I do feel that I have done too much conventional research, whereby reading into things too much, and not doing them enough, or as much as I could have, and it is because of this, that I have decided that I will for the next project set myself the task of many short briefs, in order to add pressure to myself, to have work completed, and to not spend too much time stuck on reading about them. Also, another problem I had on this, was sticking to keeping a Blog, I have never wanted or sought the need to have one, and so to be told that it was compulsory, made me not want to do it even more, and so I would update it irregularly, and keep a YouTube playlist, and reflective diary instead, however coming to the end of the project, I see the reasoning behind the blog, and will at least attempt to stick to it for the next project, hopefully another lesson well-learned.
I have also learned a great deal, from juggling my work, with my part time job, attending university, volunteering and trying to maintain a social life; I have learned that although this forced me to look at my time and use it more wisely and effectively, the concept was better than what actually happened, I found myself exhausted and getting quite ill, sometimes too much, is too much; and I will take this lesson with me as I progress, I feel that sometime in the near future, it maybe necessary to give up my part time job (and find another means of making money) and also to cut down on a lot of my wasted social time, creating a work/play balance that will be more fitting.
Finally, I do feel that this project has been extremely useful, not so much in the building of a portfolio terms, but in terms of gaining knowledge about the animation, and the many different forms it takes; but principally knowledge about bettering me as an artist, yet encouraging me to keep experimenting.
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