Wednesday 22 April 2015

Responsive End of Module Self Evaluation

This has been a module that I have definitely struggled with. I have found it difficult as creating finished work and final pieces is the thing that I find the hardest, and that has essentially been the focus of this module, taking on lots of briefs and turning them round in a much shorter space of time, and displaying them in a professional manner and envisioning them in context. All has been rather a test on my still developing yearling-like photoshop skills. However I have really enjoyed some of the variety of briefs that I have taken on.

I enjoyed particularly the reportage brief, it was different to the others in the sense that is was allowing me to simply nurture and build on a body of drawings, and this body just evolves to become my final work. This to me is much easier than trying to straight away produce a resolved finished piece, and it I think it suits my creative and more inventive way of working, I love to experiment. If I had pushed further perhaps some really interesting results.

This has been one of my first proper experiences of working in collaboration with another like minded practitioner in the subject of design, I found Jake to be a good partner, his graphic design skills balanced well my drawing and image making mindset. We set ourselves quite a challenge by taking on an animation brief, as both of us had only the most minimal experience in animating. We managed to accomplish our brief relatively successfully, with our final outcome receiving positive feedback. I have always felt my work would benefit from collaborating with a graphic designer, as I am good at being an experimental image maker, but not at framing or layout (lets not even mention typography). I have found it therefore to be a positive and informative experience working so closely with someone studying in these fields specifically, its opened my mind and eyes to their ways of working, so that I hope in the future I can at least consider these things that bit more, and improve as I go along with them. The partnership did get difficult towards the end, I felt like I could have really done with support with finishing the animation off, as I am not a confident animator and another person available to discuss and validate decisions can make things go a lot more quickly, (as I also find this a good way to improve my skills on the software.) but my partner on a few occasions didn't want to get out of bed.

Some positives from this module are that my drawing has developed if nothing else, and my ability with technology has definitely improved (tragically as surprising as that seem to one looking at my design boards particularly.) I also had never done such an lengthy and in depth brief analysis before, now after having done that I feel like I can capitalise on this a little more in future briefs, so long as I take the time to apply these skills. It also has been slightly rewarding seeing all of my final work together in my project report, despite not being overly please with many of the outcomes themselves.

On the whole I am very disappointed with how I have performed in this module, I kept disorganised for too long and have really let myself down for it. This was an opportunity to really push and better myself, and perhaps gain a bit more confidence by submitting and putting out work that I feel proud to have my name attached to. So for the future I will aim to do somethings differently. Firstly to be more committed to the briefs I am taking on, and ensure that I give them the time that they deserve, so I need to make sure that very early on I arrange at least a few concentrated sessions on it that will allow me to progress my ideas. Another thing to improve is that I need to blog much more as I go, this will help me to get the most out of the analytical nature of it, and have the time to improve on things when I reflect on them too, it is no longer acceptable or good enough to be stating all of the things that I think are bad and ought to change at the end of a module like I have done a bit here. I need to really start pushing myself more and demanding the best, I think I have proved to myself that I have more than enough potential to be able to excel at these briefs, but potential isn't good enough anymore. I need to get more confident about creating finalised work for other people, once I start really pushing myself I know that I could achieve good things.

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