Reflection/ 7x7 1

I’ve started the year with some client commissions/ logo briefs. Generally, I have really enjoyed making the work but I have hated dealing with clients.

Client 1:

With the Yum Grub brief I had no idea how much to charge so I ended up charging an hourly rate. Reflecting on this, it was a bad decision because negotiating my hours was difficult I wasn't payed enough. In future I am going to have a set price. I also didn't pre-negotiate the number of alterations and ended up creating 32 variations because she kept getting the translation wrong and wanted so many type variations. I felt pressured into doing it because she couldn't change it herself. Next time I am going to include two minor alterations and have a set rate for more.

Client 2:

I received a brief to do 10 illustrations for a brochure for Living Nutrition. I had plans but was set a tight deadline of a week so canceled them. However, she then didn't send me the final confirmation for a month before proceeding to try and do the same thing again, so I told her it wans't possible. In future I am going to be more stern with my hours and fit the work around my plans rather than changing my timetable to suit the client.

Competition brief: I was sent a logo brief by someone who is part of a page called Radio HP (an elitist marketplace you can only join if you went to private school/ are recommended). The prize was £1000 and a feature in their mail-out - where they write about your upbringing. I ended up entering but had a dilemma if it was worth doing for the money because it is not something I want my name anywhere near. This is the first time I have had difficulty taking on work because of personal values. I think that this dilemma is going to come up a lot in the future because my work is so centered around ethics. I need to remember that they are the most important thing to my practice so I need to stand by them. But how far do I take this: ethical fashion is so important to me but if H&M asked me to do their campaign would I say no?

Strengths/ future:

Aside from these struggles, it was nice to not get so bogged down in concept, to craft something focused on identity and aesthetics. Making illustrated logos is something that works well for me because my illustrator skills are strong and I like creating shape based work. Trying to communicate a message with as little information as possible is also something that I really enjoy doing. It will work well in my advertising portfolio alongside my more concept rich stuff - it shows I can start to create a brand aesthetic. I would definitely like to try doing more branding beyond creating just the logo but for now I am excited to get stuck into some more research driven briefs.

Statement of Intent

I am going to spend up until Christmas answering the BICeBe 2019 international poster design brief, researching 'The Era of Disinformation’ and ‘Female Empowerment’. I aim to create 2 political posters and one gif. After Christmas I would like to continue answering briefs based around social issues, raising awareness and making a comment. 

I want to have a series of completed poster briefs with supporting sketchbooks by the end of the year. I also want to have done some more client work while I still have the support of Uni, as I've been struggling with this lately.  I also need to start marketing myself online through a professional Instagram and wbsite. I am also going to start a journal where I document interesting social issues that I have read about and potential design concepts.

Visually, I want my work to be bold, bright and immediate. I am going to start by limiting myself to 1/2 colours and trying to extract any unnecessary for the storytelling. I have found that creating simple/ direct work effective within the context of social poster design. I also want to continue using visual metaphors comparisons and comments.

By crafting my images this way, I want my images to be alluring and grabs people’s attention, particularly on social media. I want them to be visually drawn into my image before being exposed to the dark edge/ harsh reality of the social issue (heightening the impact). Creating these contrasts with movement is also something that I want to continue exploring. My work is aimed at young adults and particularly socially aware individuals.

I am going to continue working digitally, using Photoshop, Illustrator and After Effects. However, I want to bring a handmade feel back into my work. I want to play with handmade and print textures and to start thinking about how I can simulate these digitally to speed up my production process. 

My main ambitions for the year are to continue building a commercial portfolio based around researching and communicating social issues. I am going to use the next brief to make sure this is definitely the direction I want to go in. I want my work to spur change, rather than telling a narrative or decorating. I also want to hone in on my production process, creating an aesthetic that works for me. Finally, I want to start thinking about how I can bring more activism into my life outside of image making. It might be interesting to back some of my images with campaigns. A question that I keep asking myself is how much difference can an image alone really make?

Who am I?

Studio Brief 2: Individual Practice

One of the things I did better in this brief than in SB1 was using my sketchbook as more of a safe space in the drafting phase. I was less precious and got down my concept storyboards as I thought of them rather than writing them down and spending too long in my own head. This gave me more time to process and refine my concepts.

Because moving image is so new to me, I initially felt very lost with how to structure them and keep movement simple but effective. My animation research is what helped me to do this. All of my examples demonstrated how sound can be used as a vehicle to add depth to simple movement and to introduce character. I also thought that the way Soul Bass turned one object into another between frames was really effective. This directly inspired my transition of the lid from the bin into the bird. 

I also really struggled with adding sound to my moving images, particularly with the gun. Here, I crafted all of the movement and its timings before introducing sound. This was a mistake because for it to work the objects have to work with and react to sound. I therefore had to totally reanimate it. I learned to from this and planned out the sound before animating my bottlenose dolphin.

Another mistake that I made was leaving my fourth final, the gun poster until two days before hand in. As a result, it does not feel fully resolved because I didn’t have time to personally reflect or gain feedback on it. I could have avoided this by working on it alongside animating. However, generally I am pleased with my decision to create two posters as my fourth final because they work well to broaden the context of my animated outcomes. For example, the gun vignette from my gif would work nicely within an newspaper editorial, alongside my red gun image. 

Personally, I thought that my bin, sea life animations were more effective than my gun. This is because they encompass my research of the value action gap better, in effect making people think more about the implications of their personal actions. I also like the anticipation of watching the journey of a moving object and seeing where it ends up. However, the gun gif received much more positive feedback because people liked its bolder statement and movement and thought that its clever simplicity made it more confident. Based on this feedback I have reevaluated my aims and in my future animations I would like to try to maintain this confidence. 

Overall, I really enjoyed this project and feel that my work is finally going somewhere. I liked the long timeframe because it gave me time to process and reimagine ideas. I think that there is a clear development and refinement across SB1 and SB2, as my confidence in concept, simplicity and boldness increased. In future I am definitely going to continue to animate and focus on editorial content as well as working on different outcomes along side each other. I also want to start bringing texture into some of my vectors. 

FINALS

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Xj38bFCt28ysJjHFEkGBHxDFf7VAk0Ye/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/17egPoMIZjCz21AvEQeY1VV5ctyvi2pY5/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HYRE2hjx1iG0tAlXPcfC93pCG-f6g-bS/view?usp=sharing

Study Task: Industry Research

I feel that before completing this brief I already knew what editorial was and where it sits within the industry. However, I did find looking into the recent editorial illustration trends really interesting and most of them were things that I had already picked up on subconsciously. The rise of social media, particularly instagram and its effect on the illustrator was something that cropped up a lot. This idea of the illustrator as a creative entrepreneur with the power to shape and share their own work was something I found particularly interesting as I begin to think about crafting my own instagram account. I also found the rise of animation within illustration and the crossing of industries interesting as these are skills I am working on bringing into my own practice. 

It was also interesting to see how different the selection of illustrators that everyone come up with was and it made for a dynamic mix in our presentation. One that I discovered that I had never heard of before was Brian Rea. I love his use of empty space, a limited colour palette and the all round simplicity of his images. I feel like I could learn something from him moving forward as these are all things I want to bring into my own image making. It was also interesting to see how the different illustrators reflected the recent trends in their work. 

However, as a group  we struggled to spread the workload across the team. This was because no one really knew what was going on and not everyone turned up. Crafting each of the slides between 6 of us also took a long time because everyone’s inputs had to be considered. We could have done this more efficiently by splitting up the workload and assigning people different jobs. This would have also been useful in the the research stage instead of everyone just researching everything.

Studio Brief 1: Live Brief

Overall I engaged well with this brief and I particularly enjoyed the research stage because both are themes that I am passionate about. However, the part that I struggled with most was the concept drafting stage. I struggled to draw out my concepts exhaustively and was spending too long on each draft. I wanted each of my initial drafts to be clear, neat and impressive to an outside viewer when this isn’t necessary at such an early stage. I wasn’t seeing my sketchbook as a safe space. This is something that I want to change in SB2. My struggle at this stage was also added to by the massive time pressure that I felt because other people were already on their finals while I was still drafting. If I had planned my time properly I would have been clear on the different brief deadlines and seen that I had plenty of time, avoiding unnecessary stress. 

However, I did enjoy thinking of visual metaphors. I have always found that my work has had a dark edge to it and the theme of ‘contrast’ is one that constantly recurs. Using visual metaphors and to create contrasts and reflect darker social issues is a really good way of channeling this interest. 

My biggest turning point was finally finding a way of crafting images that works for me and fulfilled my ‘goals for 504’. This was mainly down to choosing a brief that perfectly suited my ‘goals’. I found that even though my concept was rich, I struggled stylistically with the first poster and I don’t think I ever got it quite right. The high level of detail in each of the bristles of the toothbrush feels distracting and unnecessary to the storytelling. I wan’t fulfilling my aim of creating bold shape based work. It wan’t until I started to detract information that wasn’t necessary and started using bolder shapes and colour that things came together in the bird poster. The bold simplicity of this image works better to communicate its social political context because it is more direct and universal. Finding this new way of crafting images really sped up the production process of my prison poster and I think that the two are really strong together. 

The incorporation of texture into my prison poster also works well. It works visually as well as adding a feeling of grittiness to this concept of ‘prison’. How to create textures and apply them to shapes is still something that I haven't get to grips with yet but I would like to continue to work out. I want to start building my own texture library on photoshop.

From this brief I want to take forward into SB2 this deduction on unnecessary information and use of bold shape and colour to communicate a social context. Having created my finals I don’t feel that I have fully resolved the brief because I still have so many unused ideas. I am therefore going continue to explore this theme of plastic waste but instead apply it to an editorial, social media content through moving image. However, I am slightly worried about the time pressure because I spent too long on this tweaking my finals. 

Group Presentation

Personal Notes:




Group Presentation Notes:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rj9ajLUHhA_fdjESwVa29QIvkliBAOQx3h67XN-tVzA/edit?ts=5aa664b7

Print Packaging Workshop

Naw, A3, CMYK
Go on shape tool, click - type in measurements (70x70mm)
click on box, alt; move to 4 sides, another for lid
add joins - 15 mm good size - put one on lid too
curve edges of folds - click white mouse - click circle, drag in
Also could add two to the tops of the side flaps - so can't see into box

Go layers, name object
duplicate it all onto a new layer
put over old one
hide old layer
to get outline of new layer - window, pathfinder, unite = outline left (UP stroke)

To put dotted lines in - could literally draw them in or use original layer
Change opacity - 40? then click stroke and tick the dashed line box
(but dotted line layer behind and change fill to no fill
Use artboard tool, drag whole image across
Now you have two
Delete fold lines on one
Make new layer for artwork
on inside - cover whole page in block colour
copy red box design ont artwork layer
Wit this selected (blue)
Offset, path, offset path, 3mm
Select new bigger shape and background - Object, clipping mask, make



Re draw dotted lines so not on box



Save as illustrator file

Plastic Research/ Ideas

- Plastic is in disposable - almost all still on planet
- durability - good - functional/ bad - indesposable
-Blue wales can't tell the difference between krill and plastic - take up hundreds of gallons of water
= blocks digestive systems
- We chuck 38 billion bottles a year (2 million tonnes)
= this year each person will consume 300 pounds/ 36 kilos of single use plastic
- Plastic coats planet like a disease
- jires move in circular motions because of earths rotations - plastic enters and is pushed to the centre of the ocean
- estimated 5 trillion pieces of plastic in the ocean
- plastic smog = plastic broken into micro plastics - take up toxic chemicals from industry (stick)  - become like poisonous death pills
= Plastic breaks up not down - Micro beads from scrubs, toothpaste also in ocean
- Sinopec dropped sacks of plastic pellets into the ocean (thousands of sacks, with millions in each) in HK - Swallowed by fish- cant be consumed any longer (blocked throats)
- also swallowed by birds - pick out of ocean, take to nests to feed chicks - stomaches literally constructed of plastic = hundreds of pieces found in stomaches - found about 250 pieces in tiny chick
- also in turtles - produces gas - gives them buoyancy - cant dive properly  = Can't dive/ die
- one trillion plastic bags produced per year - 12 min use time - 2 mill a min (?)
- more dolphins and turtles turning up dead
- micro plastics - krill - small fish - big fish - dolphins (in blubber)
- Uneducated people  burning plastic - toxic smoke (cancerous toxins)
- Nice Quote: 'The world of plastics is present everywhere, this presence is but a premonition of a future world, our children will see a bit of that world and our grandchildren will not see the end of it'.
- People are living on mountains of plastic - like a landfill - small islands don't have anywhere to dump their plastic waste - end up living on top of it - in disposable - covers whole stretches of land
- islands are literally choked and covered with own plastic waste
- BPA (fake oestrogen) is in most plastic
- Potential Solutions:
- Aim to make plastic a currency - people can collect - payed to recycle it - processed into pellets sold back to companies/ Developed machine - end of life plastic to diesel
(Attenbrough:)
- 8 mill tonnes per year dumped in oceans
- Albatros - eat/ get wings caught - toothpicks rupture stomaches, whole plastic bags
- 1 Million pieces of plastic square mile
- enough nets laid to wrap around the world twice
- rising ocean temps - rising coral bleaching - 213 reefs suffered last couple years
IDEAS:
- morphed plastic bag jelly fish - jellyfish that says Sainsburys on it - big fish trying to eat it
- World with some sort of plastic disease spreading over it ( plastic bad spreading like disease - brand name - slowly covering planet/ blocking out sun
- Play on the globe being made out of plastic - morph with obvious sphere plastic object - hinged thing opening - plastic objects/ toothbrushes falling out 
- Globe being literally choked by something made of plastic - plastic bag over head - like being hanged, something wrapped around it - somehow visually suffocated 
- people living on islands of plastic - globe - islands consisting of landfill 
- Every toothbrush still existing - make islands out of them - can't tell unless you look close
- Plastic as a literal weapon to fish: 
- Animal, shark - plastic bag over head - like sack before hanging - Somehow morph imagery with that of capital punishment - think about how I can turn mundane plastic objects into weapons 
= A toothbrush - sword/ gun, (Almost every toothbrush still exists) fish inhaling a plastic sheet 
- Bird or fish - whole internal digestive system is made up of plastic objects - lighter, toothbrush, cup, bag etc.
- fish can't tell the difference between prey and plastic (Prey or Plastic?) - ocean of animals with brand names on them 
- Something to do with a bottle nose dolphin - with a bottle on its nose suffocating it - Look out for the indigenous bottle nose dolphin - natural wonders 
- some sort of play on fish in a bottle, bottle in a fish
- Fish have plastic homes - create scene from plastic objects - too complex? - Animal - rocks or coral made of plastic - Sarcastic slogan - 100% natural 
- Plastic breaks up not down - literal rep

Toothbrush Research :
- All toothbrushes since 1938 still exist
- 4.7 Billion go to landfill per year
- 2nd biggest plastic waste (?)

Does it have to be a graphic design vector poster or can it be photography ?

Because it is an international poster competition does it have to be a world issue or something really specific?

- Looking at issues with UK prisons - how they are really overlooked because of funding cuts - 

lack of rehabilitation - not enough guards - spend too much time in cells - not enough attention from prison guards - more drug use/ crime 

Also interested in :

- Bullying how its a thing in adulthood 

- Hearing problems - overlooked in young people - how to spot it 

Social Political Poster _ More research/ Concepts

Adult bullying -
Still happens in adulthood - bullies better at hiding it
Do it without drawing attention
more subtle
Often from a superior


Deafness in young people
- Overlooked issue
- Noise induce hearing loss is a rising issue - MP3s etc.
- Turn it down poster?
- US campaign showed that 17% of teens already had some sort of noise induces hearing old
(24% below 70)


Gender stereotypes stunning potential


Children's health - Abuse - Starting small - growing into something big


Something environmental
- Species extinction
- Plastic waste - all toothbrushes ever used still exist
- 4.7 billion landfill per year - over 1000 years to biodegrade
- 2nd largest plastic waste (after bags)
- Still exist since starting in 1938
- Beth Terry plastics ted talk 
- Last attenbrough 

Political Poster Concept Research - Prisons

Problems in UK prisons:
Suicide every three days
Conditions particularly bad in children's prisons - Some eat all their meals in their cells - too much tome in solitary, not enough exercise or education - shaping them for the better or worse?
food budget cuts - £2.20 per prisoner per day in 2012 to £1.96 a day in 2013Drug use - high - addiction comes in to it - another way prisoners are struggling to cope - mental healthguards scared for their own safetyWay overcrowded 85,000 prisoners in England and wales (2017) 45,000 in 1990 - Pushed up by greater awareness of violence crimes - rape, domestic abuse answer not to cut number of prisonersviolence, self harm to highPrisons should be about reforming prisoners - not just housing them - these conditions encourage crime - not healthy'spice' synthetic marajuana hard to detect - boredom too much time in cells - gangs trade it in prisonsIllusion that we need to cut prison numbers or do nothingMassive cuts - cuts to prison staff by con/ lib dem 2010 (over 1/3 - 6,000 - 2010) = cause (prison nos also didn't shoot up as mcuh as anticipated so they shut like 3 old prisons stating expensive to maintain and outdated)- made more dangerous = rehabilitation less likely - whole purpose of prisons defeated- Less alarmed doors working, holes in fences - prisoners not watched - more violence- sewers, toilets blocked - smashed windows - (2017) 45% of children in young offenders institutions said they felt unsafe in the prisonOvercrowding - major issue (more people caught, failure to use other forms of treatment?, less funds etc.)- Less staff/ money puts prison focus on risk management not rehabilitation(Budget cuts = staff cuts = drug, drinking (feeds) violence (feeds) self harm, suicide = less chance of reform = not doing their job)Solution - better funds = better trained staff, drug treatment facilities etc.Detail of overcrowding issues:- Less guards - less contact with prisoners - less chance for rehabilitation- Prisoners spend too long in cells - more tension with guards- Less hygienic, more self harm in young women,- Also really high rates of prisoners with mental health issues/ drug offenders - should be housed elseware- about 1/3 prisoners reoffend - more for children- Year to June 2017 - almost twice as many self harm incidents as female prisoners - 798 serous assaults to prison staff ( 25% rise)- Assault very 20 mins in UK
- Almost 1/4 prisoners assaulted annually








America : Also overcrowding problem - too many prisoners - 2/3 who leave return
- federal judge - one person dying a week from medical neglect, California 

Book Research

Animal Farm - George Orwell

Animals want freedom from human masters
Fight them - claim the farm - becomes animal Farm
freedom to make own decisions
Pigs most intelligent - leaders
Corruption comes in - Nepolien - steals food, ideas etc.
Drives away snowball and uses as scapegoat
Democracy --> dictatorship
animals starved pigs fat - break own rules - do what old human dictators did
pigs can't be separated from humans - Change name back to Manor Farm

Believed in socialism - Government control of Nations economy - to close rich, poor gap
Need for socialist ideas - but how they threatened those in power
Russian revolution comes in

A Brief History Of Time - Stephen Hawking

Cosmology book (universe study) for non specialist reader - all adults
Things that govern the universe explained - what governs it
How time works, Gravity, the building blocks
Big bang, black holes
Relativity, quantum mechanics
Explains debates over centuries - old theories - proven, disproven

Pretty illusutration - something basic, simple, build something 3D, photograph
Couldn't really do something bold/ clever as other books - could play with shapes -linking front, back

Noughts and Crosses - Malorie Blackman

Noughts - white
Crosses - black
crosses superior - kept seperate
leads - friends - frowned upon - cross (stephy) doesn't care sits with nought (callum) anyway
Every thing gets messed up - both lots of family issues
Stephy asks Callum to run away with her - doesn't see letter - just misses her
assumes doesn't care about friendship
Stephy returns for Callum - finds letter, goes to him - with LM tries to kidnap her
Callum tells Stephy he loves her, make love, gives escape instructions
LM split up - find Government informer
Stephy pregnant, Callum mechanic
Meet discuss to keep (parents want an abortion)
Callum arrested - no one believes she wasn't raped
Say that if they keep the baby - Callum hanged - Decide to keep it anyway
Just before both shout I love you
Decides to name after father then changes so won't know fathers role in LM
noughts + crosses = checkmate
- racial injustice - interesting reversal - Death as a result of injustice - fuel the fire or back down?
- love - as a drive - risk danger to feel it
- Pretty complex, dark for a 'children's book' - early teens - cover appeal to them
- All covers so far = typographic - how do I reimagine this but keep it simple
- rejected, approved - figures with crosses, noughts on their faces - crosses in black - bigger, front - noughts smaller back - drawn on a piece of lined paper
- Game of noughts and crosses, something interesting happening
- People waiting to pick a nought or a cross - then stamped Approved, rejected
- Queue of blank figures (outlines) on back cover - noughts and crosses rolling down spine onto foreheads on front - noughts
- outlines figures on back, randomly ordered noughts and crosses on the spine, figures filled in black and white on the front

- For all of these it would be interesting to just think of a general comment on the book that sums it up/ I can visualise (like the world with a fuse on it)

Ahhh how do I choose a brief ?!?!

Manchester Art Gallery 

Could create a sort of map of the gallery space - crowded with pieces - interactive - colouring in
have main works bigger - stars on map
- building facade, add in main lobby space, other important facades - with paintings etc. (how would I tackle multiple floors?)
- simplify works - educational and interactive - keep it simple, not too cluttered
- Or have key works, space around the page - somehow interlink
= reacting to each other - or interacting within space - have outside scene - place works within it
- animate works - or make a fake town where these are the major landmarks or simplified wheres wally vibes (for young children) -
- Page covered in lots of interlinking characters some in gallery some not - colour in ones that are there - when you spot them
- some sort of maze or comic strip which includes characters from pieces

 

 



Action on Hearing Loss

- Really interesting - would like to read into the case studies and explore it deeper
- not sure it will give me the freedom to work in the way that I have identified
- seem set on making the case studies the focus - couldn't make a bold shocking image - feel like because they aren't well established they are looking for something softer
- Cold take a case study - illustrate the effects of hearing loss over a photograph - raise a question?
(rather than making a bold statement?) - could be an interesting change - illustration (works well here)
- Could focus on teens - identify still a problem - overlooked - how to spot it
- If I made two pieces - could also make a moving image ??? - how to spot it - animate photo with moving illustrated parts - pan around it



Socio - Political Poster

- Really interesting - love posters from past finalists - fun to work with simple shapes - vector graphics
- Would be a good brief to help me follow my aim of simplification - taking a complex idea and boiling it down
- Don't like how open it is - what issue would I focus on? - what am I interested in
- Capital punishment, prison system, Environment and wastage, migration workers importance, education importance, Anxiety and depression - inspiring poster to look at gives hope, UK (and US) prison system - comment - woman's prisons - institutionalisation - routine becoming life in prison can't survive without it, deafness - problem - how to identify it - is this a big enough world problem for this brief? Probs not, Gender neutrality - enforcing an open upbringing of neutrality (gender stereotypes stunning potential - told what they can and can't do - ingrained in them) - not plating ideas in children's heads, children and children's health is something I'm interested in - something about adoption system, child abuse, how malleable children are at a young age - something small growing with them as they grow (effecting them mentally) starts as a small seed blossoms into a larger mental issue, eating disorders, animal extinction, unhealthy dieting, bullying - not just restricted to children
- (but is it supposed to make a point to stimulate the everyday viewer to think or state my own opinion?, Both?




Penguin Design Awards

- Sounds interesting - like that I am given something to explore and research already - would probably prefer to design a poster but might be interesting to think about a whole cover - how I can tie the back to the front - more of a challenge with typography etc.
- Would just choose one book from this brief/ design either one or two covers for it
- Which book sounds the most interesting to me ?
- the most impressive books are very original - illustrators craft their own imagery rather than taking already constructed imagery from movies, old covers etc. - PUT A FRESH TWIST ON THE BOOK
- Maybe don't look at any of the past covers for whichever book I choose ?
- Could be cool to again play with vector graphics

 

I really want to work with moving image again and the hearing loss brief is the only one that will allow me to do this. I think I could do something interesting with this but I might be pushed for time and I don't like how closed the brief is - maybe I should wait until the next brief and instead do the socio political brief and find something that I am really interested in (that I can continue to explore)? I really want to do at least one socio political poster so I am going to do that plus a book cover or a hearing loss campaign poster. (then my second thing will be an edition to one of them - moving image of campaign poster, a redesign of my book cover or another sociopolitical poster).

Goals of 504

I want to take froward the simplification of my work from 503. In particular, the use of bold graphic shapes. I want to continue to keep my images simple through a focus on line and shape rather than tone and the realistic representation. I also want to continue this simplification through the use of a limited colour palette. I would like to try to use no more than two or three colours. In doing this, by May I aim to have developed a way of working that is less visually complex than in previous work. To achieve this I would like to work with both hand crafted and digital media. Bringing hand crafted print textures in my digital moving image worked really well to bring my animations to life in 503. To push myself in this module I would like to take on and visually resolve a theme that is new to me. I want to expand my knowledge and make research the focus of this module. It might be interesting to work with a quite complex, heavy or dark theme which I could pick apart, simplify and try to find the essence of in my images. Again, making simplification my focus in this module.

Summative Project Report

Studio Brief 3:15 Second Sting

vimeo.com/251151266

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Studio Brief 3: Reflective Report

Overall I engaged well with this module but I think my biggest downfall was not considering the brief specifications closely enough in planning it, which cost me a lot of time. I planned my image in portrait which meant it was drowning in white space and utilised the widescreen composition badly. I overcame this by panning into my image, which coupled with the gradually intensifying sound and effect worked well to communicate my theme of contrast.

Another major thing that I learned with this brief was that if I am really struggling with the software  to just move on to something else until I can get support. I wasted a week of Christmas trying to import my photoshop document into after effects only to find out it was a problem with my computer. However, I did learn a lot about managing my stress levels when something isn't working.

I also really struggled with the time constraint and was only able to complete half of my initial animation plan. I still think that the end product is a little rushed and had it been say 20s I would have had more time to build up the tension. But I think that overall I  was successful in creating an eerie, ambiguous mood within the timeframe. I think that sound was my my most useful tool in doing this and I was amazed at how much it brought my moving image to life. Being able to use sound and motion bought another dimension to my work and helped to heighten my theme of contrast (loud/ quiet, fast/ slow, delicate/ bold). It was interesting to think about how the layers might physically interact with one another.

I also think that I incorporated print texture into this moving image well. The combination of this and the effects adds another level of visual interest to something quite simple.

Although I like the ambiguity of this animation, it would have been interesting to think more about how I might bring text into my image. Perhaps the quote this image was based on, 'lily stems...like dismembered arms'.

I chose to animate this print because it is simple and doesn't have to move a lot. But now I have the skills I think it would be an interesting challenge to attempt a more dynamic image of a tiger. Making it move in a slow, unnatural way might even add to the eeriness of the animation. If I have time I would like to do this next.