portfolio preparation

As part of our assessment we've been asked to produce a portfolio featuring the best of our work so far. Above I have three of my favourite double page spread and three of my favourite projects. These are feel are my most successful and therefore appear at the start, middle and end of my portfolio. It's the first time that I've had to create a portfolio in this format and struggles translating screen size to A3. On the screen it may appear small but having to remember how large it will actually print has helped me progress. Although I have chosen to submit a digital version of my portfolio I would like to have a printed version for myself personally and aim to have this done before the next assessment. Seeing it physically now will give me plenty of time to understand what doesn't look right in time for the end of year assessment where a physical portfolio is required.

pasta final

Now that the basic project is over I can look back at truly how much I have learnt about illustrator. Coming onto my course I was a complete novice and now I've achieved complicated shape work. At the beginning of the project I was forced to draw spaghetti simply because anything else was too difficult. When I felt stuck in the middle of the project I decided to go in a new direction, which I now think was a great decision. I'm very happy with the end result and feel its because I challenged myself. I started off slow but once my confidence in the software grew I went straight after my ideal. I pushed myself to try something I have never been able to achieve before in terms of software. If I had to do the project again I hopefully would have reached this stage a week earlier. This would have given me time to continue to explore the way the image should be formatted, resulting in a further developed idea.

learning how to use after effects

vine & rotoscoping

We've started to learn the technology behind animation and video making in simple steps to prepare us for after effects. The first thing we looked at was vines and how we can quickly create a 6 second stop frame animation. From the above I feel that the coffee cup is more successful due to its simple and easy storyline, however adding faces to objects isn't a sophisticated design choice. From the one day workshop we learnt how you can quickly get an idea across with very little time and props. We also went on to learn about rotoscoping, a technique that is all around us. The idea of drawing on top of a video already existing, which we experimented with in groups. We went out and filmed 4 second clips, we then rotoscoped over them and then compiled the clips together into a joint film. We've already learn't so much and I look forward to learning about affect effects.