Lots of speculative and developmental drawings here; great to see your Photoshop skills improving too. Some advice re. presentation; take the time to post-produce your sketches – however basic or embryonic – in Photoshop, and by this I mean simply adjusting the levels and brightness and contrast until they are bold and truly ‘visual’. All of your uploaded images suffer from a grubby quality born from the camera and the available light-levels; also, crop and re-size your drawings in readiness for uploading to your blog to create a more professional and considered appearance. Yes, this means adding more time to your already busy schedule, but from this point on, everything you produce should reflect on you positively. In time, your blog will serve as a self-promotional tool too, so be sure to take the time to get your work ready for the public sphere. Now that you’ve been blogging a bit, perhaps it’s time to revisit the design of your template and better distinguish you and your work; visit 2nd year Leo Tsang’s unit 1 blog from last year for an example of what a great ‘creative development’ blog can look like; the brief was a little different then, but the expectation of what a student can produce in 5 weeks was not. Take the time to work backwards through his posts. This is what a creative project at degree level looks like…
It’s clear from your life-drawings that you’re not yet confident in this area; I encourage you to persevere, further enhance your looking/observational skills. I can already see improvement in the latest Photoshop images. Keep at it.
You came to me worried about your slant on the films you’ve watched; you needn’t have, as your reviews are distinguished by your insights; I sense that you’re really engaging intellectually with this process and that’s great. Yes, I think from a style point-of-view, your academic writing needs greater sophistication, but all of this will come as you progress through the course. Again, in presentation terms, I don’t like how you’re demarcating your quotes; all those colours and highlighted passages are very distracting, and make your reviews fall away into fragments. I strongly suggest you keep things very simple; one font, one colour, use of italics for quotes and use the Harvard Method + bibliography to cite your sources (just as you would if you were writing an essay). In addition, hyperlinking the quotes to their original source is a convenient way of encouraging your readers to go beyond the subject.
In terms of your hybrid specifically, your approach is suitably from the ‘inside out’, and I like your visualizations of the human/shark fusion. Remember, however, that this is also a self-portrait – perhaps the biggest challenge of this brief is to ensure some likeness or semblance to the self survives the metamorphosis.
I couldn’t find any posts relating to your proposed written assignment? I suggest you put a post together asap outlining your intentions.
A general reminder that, alongside everything else you need to have ready for crit day, you also need to submit an offline archive of your creative development blog. There is a way of exporting your blog as PDF via Blogger – which would be ideal for this purpose. Incase you missed the original post, Alan gives details here:
And finally – now is the time to return to the brief; time and again, students fail to submit what they’ve been asked to produce – and how; usually because they haven’t looked properly at the brief, or haven’t done so since week one. Trust me on this; just take a few minutes with a highlighter pen to identify what is required, when, and how. Remember – non-submissions are dumb!
Anatomy: Interim Online Review 05/10/2010
ReplyDeleteHey Aiden,
Lots of speculative and developmental drawings here; great to see your Photoshop skills improving too. Some advice re. presentation; take the time to post-produce your sketches – however basic or embryonic – in Photoshop, and by this I mean simply adjusting the levels and brightness and contrast until they are bold and truly ‘visual’. All of your uploaded images suffer from a grubby quality born from the camera and the available light-levels; also, crop and re-size your drawings in readiness for uploading to your blog to create a more professional and considered appearance. Yes, this means adding more time to your already busy schedule, but from this point on, everything you produce should reflect on you positively. In time, your blog will serve as a self-promotional tool too, so be sure to take the time to get your work ready for the public sphere. Now that you’ve been blogging a bit, perhaps it’s time to revisit the design of your template and better distinguish you and your work; visit 2nd year Leo Tsang’s unit 1 blog from last year for an example of what a great ‘creative development’ blog can look like; the brief was a little different then, but the expectation of what a student can produce in 5 weeks was not. Take the time to work backwards through his posts. This is what a creative project at degree level looks like…
http://ltsang.blogspot.com/2009/10/final-portrait.html
Notice the control, restraint and general consistency.
It’s clear from your life-drawings that you’re not yet confident in this area; I encourage you to persevere, further enhance your looking/observational skills. I can already see improvement in the latest Photoshop images. Keep at it.
ReplyDeleteYou came to me worried about your slant on the films you’ve watched; you needn’t have, as your reviews are distinguished by your insights; I sense that you’re really engaging intellectually with this process and that’s great. Yes, I think from a style point-of-view, your academic writing needs greater sophistication, but all of this will come as you progress through the course. Again, in presentation terms, I don’t like how you’re demarcating your quotes; all those colours and highlighted passages are very distracting, and make your reviews fall away into fragments. I strongly suggest you keep things very simple; one font, one colour, use of italics for quotes and use the Harvard Method + bibliography to cite your sources (just as you would if you were writing an essay). In addition, hyperlinking the quotes to their original source is a convenient way of encouraging your readers to go beyond the subject.
In terms of your hybrid specifically, your approach is suitably from the ‘inside out’, and I like your visualizations of the human/shark fusion. Remember, however, that this is also a self-portrait – perhaps the biggest challenge of this brief is to ensure some likeness or semblance to the self survives the metamorphosis.
I couldn’t find any posts relating to your proposed written assignment? I suggest you put a post together asap outlining your intentions.
A general reminder that, alongside everything else you need to have ready for crit day, you also need to submit an offline archive of your creative development blog. There is a way of exporting your blog as PDF via Blogger – which would be ideal for this purpose. Incase you missed the original post, Alan gives details here:
http://ucarochester-cgartsandanimation.blogspot.com/2010/09/how-to-turn-your-blog-into-pdf-document.html
And finally – now is the time to return to the brief; time and again, students fail to submit what they’ve been asked to produce – and how; usually because they haven’t looked properly at the brief, or haven’t done so since week one. Trust me on this; just take a few minutes with a highlighter pen to identify what is required, when, and how. Remember – non-submissions are dumb!
ReplyDelete