Thursday, November 30, 2006

Mind Games, Photoshop, and Spotty Old Men?

After the 'joyous' presentation of last week, I wasn't much looking forward to college this week I'm sad to say. I was exhausted from lack of sleep, and was ill which didn't really help. College was the last place I wanted to be. So as Wednesday rolled around once again, and I dragged myself out of bed and onto the train I began wondering what Steve had planned for us this week. More presentations? Work? A new task? I remembered we were getting a Photoshop assignment on Thursday and I cheered up a bit.

When I arrived at college, Steve was standing with his usual suspect grin and my mind began to wonder. When James mentioned a 'surprise presentation' my own suspicions began to rise and suddenly getting as far away from college as quickly as possible was becoming a very appealing option. I asked Steve about presentations and he gave a very cryptic response.

Damn Steve's mind games.

For about half an hour I sat, quite nervous, about the prospect of another presentation. But luckily it turned out Steve was giving us a brief lecture on 'Type Glossary' and the rest of the day was free for us to get on with work. Once again relief set in as the extra time to do some work was greatly appreciated. I got quite a lot done, until a headache set in and I was unable to do much work for a while because of the pain.

Thursday was a completely different start. Once again I dragged myself out of bed, not because I didn't want to go to college, but just because I was comfy and warm. I got on the train and once more began thinking about the day ahead, thinking what we would be doing, how long we would get to do it, and how hard it would be. I think it's the earliest I've ever arrived at college.

Steve gave us a disk to pass round with our two tasks on and I loaded them onto the computer, I looked at the first task and immediately panic set in once more. I knew the image in front of me from my interview last year. The image Steve had shown me on last year's first years portfolio websites. A timed assignment. Luckily however Steve said we had two weeks to complete both tasks.The first task we were given was to restore an old black and white photograph of 3 old men sitting on a bench holding a trophy, that was, to put it simply, wrecked. Torn, burnt, bleached, bent, scratched. You name it, it had it.

Onto Photoshop then and out with the cloning tool and spot tool, trying to remove the deformities. Then Steve came to look at my work...

Attempt two it was. And I did the same things and once again Steve came over....

Attempt three went well. Though Steve has yet to come and look at it. Next week might be a completely statement. I'm quite pleased with my photo so far however, so hopefully Steve will be too.

In just a few week both assignments are due in, so the nerves are starting to hit, so over the next week I'm going to put as much work into both assignments as possible. Even thing's I think I've finished I'm going to go over and make sure they're right. The pressure of a referal is something I could really do without.

The main thing that stands out for me this week was that perhaps I didn't put enough effort into my contents as I could have. I didn't reference any books, in fact, I didn't even look in any books if I'm being honest, and I didn't cross reference everything that I looked at. I think that this was perhaps the 'bordem' factor that I talked about in a previous blog, but in future I will definately go back and recheck or even redo work if it is time consuming/boring, instead of finishing it and taking the 'That's It' attitude.

Wednesday, November 29, 2006

BASIC Principles

Below are my two 'thumbnail' ideas. Because they're 'thumbnails', they're nothing special, and are by no means finished or even correctly proportioned. But they do give a rough idea of what my final designs will look like. Any feedback on which is the preferential idea, why it is, or why it isn't, or even just what you like and dislike about each idea would be greatly received.

Option 1





Option 2




Thursday, November 23, 2006

Simply Red - Oh Only If It Were...

Red - In some places red symbolises love, Christmas, religion, importance, victory and good luck. So why is it to me that red symbolises anger, hate, and resent?

Well up until yesterday it didn't, I was happily swanning along in the positive side of red as I arrived at college wearing a blue t-shirt (trusting, calm, relaxed)*. I sat down red-y for a presentation from Steve, sketchbook and pen in hand.

The title of the presentation appeared on the screen, slowly fading into view. 'PRESENTATIONS'. I wrote it down. I could feel a few nervous stares in the room. The lecture began with Steve explaining about presentations, what to do in presentations, how to stand etc. This was all well and fine, I merely assumed Steve had no relevant presentation to give us, and so was giving us this one to get it out of the way. Looking back I realise that this was the biggest mistake I've made on the course yet.

Once the presentation had finished, Scott asked a simple question about when we would be having our first presentation. Steve's smile said it all and the nerves began to rise. But presentation's don't bother me. Do they?

Steve told the group that we would be pairing up to do a presentation on a colour. In mine and Gem's case, this was red. He then went on to say that we would be giving our presentations at 2pm, that very day! We immediately started work. I found myself asking questions such as, 'what do I know about red?', 'Didn't I read something about it that one time?', I made a note to myself, anything that could ever possibly be related to anything on this course, ever, to write it down for future reference. It wasn't the first time I'd worked with Gem, but it was the first time we had really worked together on a proper task (I.e. not just induction week). It was good working with her as we could both help each other out on our tasks (I felt sorry for Craig who had volunteered to do it on his own).

After dinner, we were given just a few minutes to print things off and head off to rehearse. We went to Gem's car and went through the presentation, trying to help each other out where we could. Gem seemed really nervous at the thought of the presentation, and kept getting things wrong, so I let her rehearse quite a lot, as I thought I would be fine. Another stupid mistake. After just an hours practice, we headed off to the rendezvous (A.k.a Refectory) and sat waiting.

Gem was first up so I gave her my USB and she went off, coming back down only minutes later to tell me the work wasn't on the USB. I panicked. I ran to the library and saved the PowerPoint presentation onto the USB and gave it back to her. Running caused my blood to pump faster around my body and didn't really help my nerves.

Nerves, what nerves? I'm not nervous.

We sat in the refectory for quite a while, all the time thinking about the presentation we had to give. But I'd done a few before, I'd be fine, wouldn't I? That's what I was still telling my self non the less.

After a while I realised I had no fact sheets to give to Steve and Diane (the 'Audience' for the presentation) so once again I ran to the library. I printed out the fact sheets, which didn't come out of the printer. Panic hit me once again! At this point Marc came out and said 'I got to choose who goes next, your in'. I saw red.

The librarian was ringing IT support at this point to find out where my missing fact sheet had gone. I heard the printer kick into action. It was my work. Relief.

I took a few deep breaths and walked to the room, my nerves building slightly. Steve had said this was a good thing however, so I dismissed it. I entered the room not knowing what to expect and loaded up the presentation. Already my mouth was dry. I tried to give the presentation the best I could, all the time worrying what I could be doing wrong. It turned out I did a lot wrong, as before I could even finish the presentation I heard Steve's voice. 'Stop.' My nerves soared at this point, not knowing why Steve had stopped me. In the end it turned out I had simply ran over the allotted time limit. My nerves of which I had being denying all this time were clearly obvious of which Steve pointed out, and I had done a lot of subconscious things which I had tried my hardest to resist doing.

After leaving the room I walked slowly back down to the canteen. I was happy to be back in a sort of 'comfort zone' of the day, alongside people who I knew would not be judging me on what I was about to do or say.

For one of the first times over the course I sat with Gem, Rich, Ben and Drew. I don't know why, perhaps as I'd being working with Gem a lot of the day? Perhaps I was disorientated after the presentation? I'm still not sure. I felt more relaxed at least. This was a good thing.

Once the day had ended, and I had got home, the presentation ran over and over in my mind. I thought long and hard about the next presentation. What would I do? Would I even turn up? What if Steve sprung another surprise presentation on us? I realised that the only thing I could do was to take it as it comes. If it's a surprise or not there is one major thing I would do differently.

Rehearse more.

I feel this is the one thing that me let down in the presentation, and the worst thing is knowing that it was all my own fault. No one else told me not to rehearse more. In fact Gem actually suggested I do, but I turned her offer down being my usual self. Hopefully the next presentation will be better, hopefully there won't be any more presentations. But then that wouldn't be the real world, and after all that's what Steve is getting us ready for. Yesterday was a presentation in front of 2 people. It could of been dozens, or thousands. The more I think about it, I thank god for Steve's surprise presentation.


*Dyer, (2006), Blue - Psychological and Cultural Significance

Thursday, November 16, 2006

Dictionary Week

Blog
N: an online diary; a personal chronological log of thoughts published on a Web page; also called Weblog, Web log


This pretty much sums up most of my week. Researching the Internet for different terms and writing them out in my own words. I can't say it was hard, research is quite an easy task, but time consuming and frustrating are two words that I would definitely 'look up'. This was in aid of the Back to BASIC assignment that we are doing (where we have to create a website about computer terms and definitions). I've still not finished the task, but I still think that I'm on target with the assignment, which is a big weight off my mind.

The second lot of dictionary related lectures came on Thursday morning. Where we were given a lecture on different industry standard image compression formats. One of which was 'Dictionary Encoding'. At this point I'd just about had enough of dictionaries (no matter in what context they were) and could just tell it was to be a bad day.

Whilst the days are getting shorter, the days of college are getting longer, as on Wednesday we stayed right up until 6 o'clock. Although we were warned about this, I didn't realise just how much an extra hour of work could take out of you. I was exhausted. So much in fact that on Wednesday night I couldn't even face reading through my lecture notes for the day, and instead decided to leave them until the weekend where I could look at the weeks notes as a whole.

Wednesday also brought with it, talk about my blog from Dean. Who said that my blog does not contain enough pictures. This is something I will bear in mind for future blogs, and will not only try and spend the week finding images for my sketch book, but also perhaps for images to be placed on my blog as well.

Thursday brought yet more fun and excitement with it. Using Photoshop in college for the first time. I finally got my serial numbers through for my version of CS2 and Studio 8 but as of yet, have had no chance to install them. So using CS2 for the first time was to be the highlight of my week. Or so I thought. The task in the assignment was much like the computing terms task, in the way that it was time consuming and frustrating. I could even go as far as saying it was boring (although this is an opinion that will probably change after looking back on the assignment). Hopefully the assignment will improve once I start writing about the images, and getting back into the reason I joined the course, and not spending my time creating graphs and charts in Microsoft Excel.

Next week ought to be a good week, as I may get chance to start designing my screens for the Back to BASIC assignment, something of which I really enjoyed in the last assignment. Also next week, I will hopefully complete the image compression task, which means that we can then use Photoshop to complete the restoration task of the assignment - something that I have been looking forward to since before the start of the course.

I've still to get around to creating my own version of an inspirational art piece, although I have had some idea's of how to do them, and how to make it my own. Hopefully I'll get chance to do it sooner rather than later.

Friday, November 10, 2006

"No Questions....apart from one...Deal, Or No Deal"

Sadly I'm not Noel Edmonds, and I don't have £250k to give away for opening a box, but I have been posed by another question. The 'Art VS Design' question once more. And as usual once more when I start trying to do an assignment I get sidetracked easily by MSN, music and random links I've been sent in e-mails. This was also a problem I had in the first assignment.

So I decided to do something about it.

I turned off the TV, the music, MSN, and closed my e-mail inbox. I was ready to work. Or was I? I began trying to start the assignment once more but my head just wasn't in the right place. So I decided that scouring the internetfor inspirational art might help me get started. It is then I found ISketch.

I've been on it for about half an hour now and it's really good. Basically it's like an online version of Pictionary. Although it may seem like a time waster at first, it really opens up your mind to be a bit more creative (and using what is basically an online version of paint with even less tools takes alot of creativity) and has really helped me get started on my assignment. I'm not sure if Steve will agree with me on this, but I'd definately check it out if your stuck getting started and don't want to get too sidetracked.

And in the end, I guess we're possed with another question. 'Time Waster or Creative Process?'

Thursday, November 09, 2006

Lessons Learnt

This week has been a bit of a disaster week for me. To start the week off, my USB we were given at the start of the year malfunctioned, and therefore I lost all my work, and then on Thursday, after re-doing some of the work, I manged to leave my USB at home. Typical. Despite all this however, I have quite enjoyed myself this week.

As I said in my last blog, I ordered a new book called '
Adobe Photoshop CS2 for Photographers'. I avoided linking to the book at first as I didn't want to advertise a book for people to buy and it turn out to be completely rubbish. However, since receiving the book I have discovered that it is in fact a really good book to use. It is not a tutorial book as such, but more of a reference book that explains how you can do certain tasks within Photoshop if and when you come across them. The book may not be for everyone, as some things in the book may be too simple for the more advanced users of the software, but for anyone who has never used Photoshop, or would like a book to keep at hand in case they get stuck on the assignments then I would definitely recommend it.

Also this week I received my copies of Macromedia (Now Adobe)
Studio 8, and Photoshop CS2. These are two software packages that we will be using over the course and thought that having the most up to date applications was probably for the best. I filled in my serial number applications and sent them off so I will hopefully get chance to get used to the new software before we have to use it for assignments.

A large proportion of this week has been spent finding inspirational artwork. All of the artwork that I have found so far is taken from CD covers from my favourite band -
Muse. Because the A4 assignment involves discussing vector and bitmap graphics, I decided that it would be best to look into vector and bitmap graphics for my artwork this week. Funnily enough, I found a really good piece of vector art and once again, from Muse.

The image on the right shows the image that I found. It is the DVD cover of one of the bands latest singles called 'Supermassive Black Hole'. As part of my self study for the following week, I am going to try and find out what companies (or company) designs Muse's CD artwork as I would be interested in seeing other pieces of their design work, as apposed to Muse, as it may be a different style but still could be quite interesting and inspirational to me.

If I get time, I may also try and recreate a piece of my inspirational artwork to get me used to the new version of Photoshop and also as a way of getting used to bitmap and vector graphics (whichever piece I choose to recreate).

All in all it has been quite a busy week, we've learnt alot of new things of which I will need to go back over and read my notes again (although for some I have already done this) and just make sure that the information has stuck as it is all things that I am sure we will need for a very long time.

Hopefully by next week I will have my goals, target audience, delivery requirements, and competitive analysis done for the A3 assignemnent, and willl have started (or at least done research into) the compression report for the A4 assignment. I think if I can those things done then I will be on schedule for completing the assignment on time, and will probably start to enjoy the A3 assignment more too, as I can begin to start designing my pages once again. Also hopefully next week will bring better luck with USB's, although I have definately learnt my lesson now about backing up my work.

Thursday, November 02, 2006

Pass go collect £200 2 more assignments

The first week back after half term, and straight back into assignments. We were given yet another TWO assignments this week. One similar to our previous assignment of which we have to create a web plan (although this time the website will be created) and one that is very Photoshop based. This it's self has already cost me £17 of my student loan as I have purchased an up to date book about Photoshop.

In general at the beginning of the week I was quite worried that having a further 2 assignments given to us (making it 3 in total) would cause me great stress and cause me to possibly panic with the amount of work load that we were given. These fears were also exaggerated by the revealing of our grades. Luckily however I passed both unit's of our assignments which has given me a new sense of motivation, not only to keep trying hard on the course, but to try even harder and hopefully get even higher grades on the next 2 assignments. Although I have yet to gain any feedback from my assignment I am looking forward to gaining criticism about my assignment so that I know what to change, and also to hear the positive things about the assignment so that I know what I did well in my previous assignment.

As well as this good news about my grades, I was also happy to find out that the amount of work we have to do for 2 assignments isn't as big as I thought it would be, although a lot of work will still obviously have to be done, it has again given me more confidence for the course, something which can only be a good thing I'm sure.

Next week is bound to be a hard slog of the assignment, as I'm sure it will start to sink in on me over the weekend just exactly what we have to do, although hopefully I shall give me time to get my head around any problems at the same time.

I also hope to get my feedback on my first assignment from Steve next week, which as I said, will hopefully give me further idea of what needs to be done for the A3 (Back to BASIC) assignment, and the book that I ordered will give me further insight into Photoshop (of which I can't gain on my own just by 'trial and error' methods of learning software) to help me not only for the A4 (Picture Perfect) assignment, but also over the next couple of years on the course.

Assignments Passed:
A2 - That's The Plan

Assignments Working On:
A1 - SketchBlog,
A3 - Back To BASIC,
A4 - Picture Perfect