Summer Update

As usual my plan to keep this updated has fallen short, mainly because of how busy I've been with various plans and projects. I'm writing now because I've reached a bit of a block, and inspiration has left me. Seems I have a lot to do and am starting to panic about where to start. 

Obviously there's a lot to be doing for college, my personal identity has remained the same and I'm still unhappy with it, and my portfolio is in desperate need of an update... then there's the 10 briefs we've been asked to develop for the coming year. Everything college related seems to me to be very unappealing after me and Will spent the summer working on a collaborative project with views to set up together after college. We had a good few plans and ideas to work into next year's time table and everything was going fine, until I went away for the weekend to see my family one last time before the summer ends.. and it's just killed my creativity! I'm gutted. And I'm totally stuck in the panic of being unprepared for the start of the new year.

So what to do about it? 

BBBREAKITDOWN...

10 Briefs

Presentation

Personal ID

  - logo/portfolio/website propsal... 

  - business card?

PPD 

  - Smoothie/soup stall rebrand

  - Kieghley Council 

  - Will & Lauren promo mailout

The thing worrying me the most is the 10 breifs, so that's the first thing to sort out as this is what's stopping me getting on with other things. To do this properly I need to first think about what my porfolio is missing.. I've never really thought about resolving any of my projects to a portfolio standard, they've always been quite conceptual and usually a lot of their strength is lost once it's in PDF. All this means that my portfolio is pretty sparse, and as I mentioned earlier I'm pretty embarrassed to still have 1st year projects in there as they're the only things suitable to this method of showcasing. 

So what I need to do now is figure out what's missing from my portfolio, keep in mind that I want to head in the direction of branding and consider an overall style of documentation.. I.e, Is everything photographed? Digital files? Shows the design process? 

I'd like my portfolio to stick to some pretty strict guidelines, as I feel there's going to be quite a varied selection of work and there needs to be something that keeps it working nicely once it's all together.

Now I've got all that figured out. Time for dinner.

Portfolio JUNE 2010

A last minute rush at a portfolio and personal identity. There are bits I like, but overall it was a case of me working on default, using what I know already works.. Not exactly as experimental as I'd hoped. 

The other shock for me was how little portfolio work I had managed to accumulate this year. I've spent so much time trying to work out what I wanted to do.. all time well spent I feel, but I'm almost embarrassed by having to include 1st year work just to fill the pages.

A pretty poor attempt.. but I plan to do a lot with the last month of the holidays, and will update my portfolio by the time college resumes in September. Watch this space.

Design for Distribution - Evaluation

Though part of a larger module overall, this section of the Design Practice module has been a bit of a roller coaster, as these things usually are for me, however, I'm not sure I like where I have ended up. The Collaborative brief ended quite strangely, and though over all I was happy with the result, I didn't feel I was well prepared for the weeks to follow. This all became evident within the first few days, when as a class we were posed some pretty difficult questions. Everyone had their own way of dealing with them, some were extremely confident - I wasn't one of those.  To have to think in such detail about where I saw myself in industry really terrified me, especially as I knew we were coming to the end of the year - a typically stressful period at the best of times. 

This significantly stunted my progress with the brief at hand, and after a week or so of panic, I began to get to grips with this new idea of writing our own briefs. It took me a long time, too long, to figure out what it was I wanted to get out of this project. The answers were simple really, but again I fell into a trap of trying to predict the outcome of every decision before it is made. This is a massive issue for me. I fear making the wrong decision and so am constantly second guessing myself - I guess this is evident throughout the year. Thinking back to the digital module, the personal issues I was having made it impossible to worry about the work, I just did it and got a great deal out of it - including my best grade yet. So it seems the more opportunity I give myself to worry and over think a project, the more I'll do it.

After this very slow start I finally pinned down what I wanted to achieve. The main one was to get into After Effects as soon as possible and start to really gain an understanding of the software. This in itself confused me as to how I would go about making sure I produced a project that was suitable to submit. I became very aware through the project that I was cutting out huge parts of the development process, lacking a strong concept and generally ignoring everything I'd learnt so far. It soon became a conscious decision - I have proven that I can deliver a project with a solid concept, I can story board and develop ideas in new and interesting ways, and I feel that the goals I had set myself in this module would have greatly suffered had I set out to do the same again. I was also aware that working with motion graphics always takes longer than I anticipate, again reinforcing my decision to limit the amount of actual design development.

Towards the end of this project is where I started to really let myself slip. Lots of the worries from earlier in the project came back, and looking back I can now see that was because I hadn't documented the early stages of the project thoroughly enough, and so the initial decisions I had made - I simply forgot. I also know, and was told many times that I just needed to get on with things, stop thinking and start doing. I think a lot of my failings towards the end of this project can be explained by a simple lack of motivation. The question is then - how can I address this in future? I think the answer to this lies within the briefs I pick in future. As the rest of the course is going to be self directed, I need to really think about the kind of brief I want to answer, I think the most important thing is to make it fun. I need to pick briefs that are fun, or can be made fun, about topics that I personally find interesting and that allow me to progress, rather than stand still. In a sense I'm happy that I had such a hard time with this project, as it's made me realise what I need in a brief, and what I definitely do not need!

To answer the all important question though, the reason I wanted to go down this path of developing technical skills - Do I want to continue with motion graphics? Yes. Definitely. I did not achieve as much as I wanted to with this module, even within After Effects like I wanted to, but it's only left me wanting to do more. I think that's a clear sign that this is what I want to do. Now I just need to make sure that this decision doesn't make me close doors for myself in other areas, motion graphics will be something that evolves and develops with me through my design practice - it's not the be all and end all of everything I do. 

Things to address over summer.

• Identify the kind of brief that I want to answer in future - keep it fun.
• Spend time actually being creative with the software I want to develop in - without the stress of a deadline.
• Do things that remind me why I love what I do, have some fun! 
• See this as an opportunity to do some of the things I've always wanted to!
• Get some more contacts within industry, take a few day trips to studios and find out exactly how and where motion graphics fits into the world.
• Figure out a way to deal with the stress and workload.
• This is my last opportunity to figure out a way of working that doesn't lead to excess stress and an inability to deal with things - I need to really utilise it.
• Do not neglect my blog. 
• I want to do so much over the summer, and I see this as a great opportunity to get into a better blogging routine. Even just 10 minutes every night would solve nearly all of my problems, and help me organise what I need to do the next day. A project diary and daily action plan combined.

To summarise, I have made a bit of a mess of the past few weeks. I think this is to do with my own worrying, making me think instead of act. It's a pretty vicious circle, and I need to be able to recognise when this is happening and take steps to rectify it in future. 

Mainframe

My online presence is obviously the most important aspect of my self promotion. Being orientated towards motion graphics, my website is going to be the most accessible way to view my work. 

Mainframe are a huge design agency, managed by the inspiration that is Fraser Davidson. Mainframe's website is layed out not unlike Psyop's - as in they have a pop out player to view individual pieces of work - though it takes forever to buffer, and you cannot have more than one video buffering at ay one time. Bit of a let down...

Fraser's own website however is incredibly simple - Contact details, C.V and a link to Mainframe. Other than this there is just a beautiful showreel.

Which begs the question, is that all I need?

Individual showcases of work often lack impact and context - but a showreel can really highlight the best of the work I have.

Psyop

Thinking about web presence, and how important that going to be for me in the next year and beyond... I think the hardest thing for any motion graphics firm is showcasing their work on the internet - there is always that problem of waiting for videos to buffer.. I think Psyop get round this brilliantly.

Check out their site here

You can open a video in pop out layer that stays open even as you navigate through the site, mltiple videos can be opened at any one time! Super.

Bark & Bite

Just before easter, we sent out 10 emails to various design agencies worldwide. The replies varied between us.. from the straight up 'fuck off's to the 'oh I like what you did there come and have a placement straight away!'s.

I was somewhere in between, with my zombie video from last term coming out on top for me, and attracting the interest of a motion graphics company on Call Lane called Bark & Bite.

They set me a really open brief based around great partnerships. From a list of words I chose to visually interpret the words short & sweet.

Everything was fine with that, I got lots of great feedback and good pointers for future reference. The animation in it's current state is unfinished, obviously, and only took about an hour or two to produce.

I haven't heard from the guys for a week or so, starting to wonder if I will...
I hope I haven't been screwed over!

0UGD202 - Module Evaluation.

1. What skills have you developed through this module and how effectively do you think you have applied them?

Having a developed a fundamental skill base throughout 1st year, 2nd year has been about developing in skill specific areas - none so much so than the digital module. I now feel very confident working with After Effects, and though I have only experienced a fraction of what the software has to offer, I am looking forward to another opportunity to build on this skill. This has been my first experience in working for screen based media so with regard to technical knowledge and ability (which build the foundation of this practice) I have improved a great deal. I'm not a particularly technical person, the idea of working with a media that doesn't allow room for technical errors is something I find quite worrying, however I think I managed to overcome this - and more importantly I allowed time to ask advice and correct any potentially fatal mistakes. Last but by no means least is the dramatic improvement in my organisational  skills, which have always been a little rough. I began to develop a great digital filing system - necessary for avoiding missing links when working in both pieces of software - and I hope to take what I have learned and apply it to the physical world.


2. What approaches to/methods of research have you developed and how have they informed your design development process?


As this was such a new way for working for all of us, not just myself, I found it difficult to apply what has come very naturally in the past. I feel the most beneficial of my research came from very specific pieces of motion graphics detailed on my context blog, and the information graphics I gathered from a variety of sources. Both of these informed my design decisions, and I think this is clear from the process of development documented on my blog. The way I moved from the title sequence of 'Euro Trip' through to 'Catch Me If You Can' and such like, are all decisions based upon what I was doing in my own work, and what was inspiring me in the real world. I do feel however that as I was concentrating so much on the new software and acclimatising to the new way of working, that this was an area I neglected to document as well as I should have.



3. What strengths can you identify in your work and how have/will you capitalise on these?


Without a doubt my strengths lay within After Effects. I focussed a lot of my time working through the software, with guidance from Mike and what I found on the internet. It's obvious that areas of the submission suffered as a result of this, however I literally feel that I could not help but want to be working in After Effects, I wanted the final resolutions to reflect how much I enjoyed working on them. As I have already stated, I am looking for the next excuse to develop my skills in this area further.



4. What weaknesses can you identify in your work and how will you address these more fully?


Weaknesses are quite rife in this submission - I have let myself down with regard to both research and development. 
It's not so much that they were not present at all, I failed to document a lot of the progress I had made and therefore the evidence of my progress through the software is somewhat lost. Though I hope the animations speak for themselves. I know that a lot of this is to do with a new way of working throwing my usual design process out of swing, however I think I have learned enough of this new practice to be able to apply research and development more throughly in the future. You could say I felt a little bit like a child in a toy shop thorough the module, neglecting the important bits for the fun stuff!



5. Identify what you will do differently next time and what do you expect to gain from doing these?


 - Take advantage of story boarding. I feel I developed a nice range of different story boarding techniques, only a few of which were actually helpful when working in After Effects, and even less of which informed decisions made in the software. Upon doing this again, I would have more of a back and forth process between the two.


- Apply my fundamental design skills to this new method of working. Research and develop accordingly, as I have done throughout my time here, and not be put off by the enormity of the new things I have to learn.