Week 5: Research Skills, John Hammersley

Alot of what we discussed during Johns class was stuff I'd heard previously but it was good to refresh my memory. The key points I will take away from this class is that I need to be selective, summarise and reference. It has been quite some time since I've undertaken 'serious' research and the class reinforced the fact that I need to be more disciplined in my approach. I'm aware that I've been focusing too closely on the mini projects and not doing enough reading. I don't have much time free to commit to my work so I need to be more realistic in what I can achieve.

John set us quite a large task to complete using UWEs online resources facility, hopefully I will find the time to dedicate to this!

Week 5: Motion Graphics: Jennifer Leckey

The class was really interesting and we looked at a lot of pieces that were really inspiring, and very technically proficient.
Jennifer had thought that we'd had 3 flash workshops already (which we hadn't) so we were all left feeling unprepared. Add to this the fact that I'm still not entirely clear of my subject area means that this week has left me feeling pretty overwhelmed.
The project set for us this week was to create a 1 minute motion graphics piece that ideally has some relation to our manifesto (final outcome for the module) using some element from our influences. Quite a scary prospect!

Week 5

Found this week quite hard to get my head around. I tried to attend a flash class in the morning which unfortunately wasn't on as the staff at the epicentre weren't aware that it was supposed to be. A real shame as time is a resource I don't have a great deal of.

My influences

Music
Dub be good to me: Beats International
Why?
Introduced me to dance/alternative music
My teacher was the lead singers mother (I was 12) and they were both lovely!

Book
A clockwork Orange: Anthony Burgess
Why?
As a genre I quite like dark books - other books such as The Rats and The Wasp Factory are also some of my favourites
I find it really interesting how a writer can make you empathise with the 'anti-hero'
Use of language - it really draws you in that you have to learn Burgess' made up slang
Never watched the film, think the story is so complex, you need time to understand the characters. I just think its really interesting to look at things from a whole new viewpoint
Powerful imagery in how things are described

Film
Waking Life: Richard Linklater
Rotoscoped film that takes place within a dream
Introduces you to really complex ideas in a very beautiful way
Good use of animation to illustrate the magic of dreams

I tend to prefer magical films and animations. Another favourite of mine is The Iron Giant, originally written by Ted Hughes. I love how poetic and moving the story is and the underlying morale of the story - 'you are who you choose to be'

Visual Artist
Airside Creative Agency: started by Alex Maclean, Fred Deakin and Nat Hunter working across disciplines of graphic design, illustration, digital interactive and moving image
Why?
Their work often seems to be quite fun - visually, I definitely love all light hearted things and this appeals to the child in me
They do allsorts, products, digital work, design. I like the idea that there creative team get different types of projects to do to feed their creative nature
Still a fairly small company but very successful. Its nice to see a smaller company make such a big mark. It's something I aspire to

Week 4: Using language affectively week 2, John Hammersley

Another challenging but interesting class with John. One thing I've learned from this class is that bias can be placed by the proposer to influence a point of view - A simple sentence can lead the reader into the kind of answer the proposer was looking for. Different theories have different bias and we need to be aware of the writer’s bias as we are researching.

Week 4: Criticism of 50 things

From our discussion of last week we criticized each other’s work based on the agreed factors that makes good design. We all presented our projects in very different ways and it was really interesting to see each other's interpretations. It became clear that perhaps not all of our chosen factors were as important as each other depending item we were discussing. For instance – for one piece of work, ambiguity seemed more appropriate however we had as a group decided that clarity was a key factor. If through ambiguity you can draw the viewer in, this seemed appropriate.My piece of work was considered and fortunately had moved on a great deal from where it was a fortnight ago (phew). The class suggested ways of making my facts clearer to follow – something I was aware was a problem but couldn’t find a suitable way to achieve and also suggested that I move away from the small gatefold booklet and progress it to 3 separate posters. This would definitely affectively deal with the problem of clarity and would be far more attention grabbing.
Unfortunately time constraints have prevented me from recreating my project as the 3 posters, however, if you're curious about my 50 facts, please click here for my emotional, habitual and lifestyle facts, here for facts about my experiences and here for facts about my characteristics.
For next week we've been tasked with coming up with a list of influences for visual, music, writing and film, and reasons as to why we are influenced by our choices.

Reconsideration of my 50 things

I tried to implement some of the feedback from week 2. From this it became clear that I needed to make more of the way I had presented the facts in an analytical way. During the redesign it became clear that there was too much information and that not all of it slotted into nice neat categories so I decided to divide my facts into sections that gave a wider picture of who I am and how the facts affect me. The design became far more information led than self analytical and was in part influenced by a music video I have seen by Royksopp which shows a slice of London life and details all the information in the video down to water usage and mass transit.
I also simplified the style so that the project became more about what I’d learnt about myself through the process rather than a bold garish poster that doesn’t truly reflect my personality. The process taught me that I strive to make sense out of the nonsensical and my decision to reflect my facts this way is evidence to this.

The individual pages

Photo of completed booklet