²

Over the course of the last few months I have approached projects in a number of different ways, starting from pure self-indulgent enthusiasm, moving to pushing my creative knowledge aswell as that of the technology, and in the latest instance just trying to complete the brief in the most polished (ie. industry style) way possible.

The first brief was to create a website to store our university project documentation. As this was the first 'real' project I think I was quite eager to impress. Full of the motivation of not having much to do with my creative side for the last 12 months I leapt into action script 3 and tore open the shiny plastic wrapping on a few freely downloadable classes. The result was a website that I was happy with, but realised read as quite a complex system. This was fine as far as I was concerned at the time but I realise it isnt quite spot on to the briefs intentions. Since then I took to posting in this blog as it is more suited to constant updates and custom content (like videos).

The second brief was a film. This was very fun to make even if it did have quite a last minute element to it. One of the reasons for this was the lack of initial inspiration, so the final film was made in the last 4 days of working almost constantly based on inspiration from a short story Tashi read online. I was in charge of the camera (partly because I wouldn't let anyone else near it most of the time!) and a couple of friends of ours featured as the main actors. The final edit was done at 4am on the day of handing in, as all the very best assignments are(!). Apart from some of the compression taking away from the clarity of the original, I feel the result carried across the surreal creepyness I was aiming for. Although my lecturers critique that having a narrative AND background music creates a confused platform of observation is a fair point.

The third brief that this review deals with (M&A and the input device are not counted) is that of the avatar. Having just completed the input device which involved trying many new things, I kind of wanted to stick to what I know for this one, not that I could have done much with the 1000 poly limit in any case (except maybe fur?). In any case I ended up learning some interesting photoshop techniques (shading my character) and trying to look at the project from a semi-professional stand point. With this mentality I finished a couple of days early with a Tarot card that, while perhaps not the best, was visually effective and sat squarely within the briefs requirements in all respects.

I think that this semester has been the cause of some interesting effects. To begin with I started with roughly the same level of competence for each of the briefs. That of competence without knowing the ins and outs of each tech. In each brief I think I pushed myself hard enough to learn more than just the necessary information so that I have a good basis for later projects. I know that eventually we will focus in on a smaller area, but for now I wanted a good solid starting 'point' from which to learn more.

If I had critique with the last few months it would be that aside from the briefs there is not much here that I could not have done myself. Much of the teaching was giving us a starting point and then leaving us to it. This is not a problem really because the idea is that we can approach lecturers for additional information. Unfortunately this was not always the case, as Clive (for instance) insisted that we solve most of our problems using google. At one point having eventually convinced him that my problem was not as easily solvable or obvious as all that (google-search is second nature to just about my entire generation anyway) I eventually was shown how to use array lists properly. I know that other members of the class have had similar situations during the year and I am interested in finding a solution (because blame is a useless concept, second only to USB powered christmas trees and other related pointless oddities). I suspect an answer would be to have an in-house 'library' with teaching materials that we can look through when we are lost and the lecturers aren't available. I would also be interested in getting design magazines in the studio, as this would provide examples of the kind of things we could aspire to.

And that concludes my review. And now if you'll excuse me I have a warm bed to attend to =) Good night.