OUGD202: Self Evaluation

1. What skills have you developed through this module and how effectively do you think you have applied them?

The skills that I have developed throughout this module naturally reflect on the application of software packages such After Effects & DVD Studio Pro; exploring what is achievable within them & how they can be used as a tool within my design practice. Most importantly in my opinion however was the investment of time spent preparing & organising a strategic approach that assisted in navigating the battle between what I would like to produce in the ideal world & what is realistically possible given my skills & the time available.

Of most significance to me was learning how to effectively apply the use of storyboarding in relation to key events that would transpose into key frames within the software. This in my opinion was an invaluable experience as it allowed me to filter my ideas down & produce a clarified direction that I believed to be realistic yet challenging.

Furthermore, one key aspect of this module was the preparation of imagery in relation to the screen based format & in this particular instance the 16:9 ratio. Choosing to work with Photoshop in conjunction to After Effects made this unquestionably important as the opportunity to scale assests up, not to mention maintain a balanced line weighting was often challenging & an aspect that needed re-visiting when preparation within the initial stages of storyboarding was not sufficient or thorough enough.

2. What approaches to/methods of research have you developed and how have they informed your design development process?

Unlike most, this module (at least to an extent) for me was not dictated or governed by the software that I was introduced to & nor would I have wished it to have been given what I have achieved upon relfection. In this instance I found it beneficial to learn about the techniques that were available to me & to interpret how the opportunities provided by the software could be used as a tool within my design practice. Beyond this, I was very focussed on looking into how my approach to designing for a World War Two themed movie season could be enhanced in refence to my design practice as well as the screen based distribution received by the chosen target audience outlined within my rationale.

As a result I invested a substantial amount of time into researching, sourcing & selecting relevant materials & ephemera of the era that I could subsequently use within my collage based approach & further analyse in terms of design concepts such as colour, type, iconography etc & tone of voice.

3. What strengths can you identify in your work and how have/will you capitalise on these?

The main success for me personally was addressing my target audience directly through a use of genuine World War Two ephemera that allowed me to not only produce imagery contextually relevant, but also analyse how the media interacted the public in the period specific to my theme.

Furthermore, it was imperative to me that I was able to achieve a balance between working with paper based collage in context to digital design alongside hand rendered illustration & to not over power one aspect with the other.

I am particularly fond of my selection of type, although at times this was problematic. The alphabet I chose omitted the two letters L & Y, both of which I had to manually contruct & second guess from structures of similar letters.

4. What weaknesses can you identify in your work and how will you address these more fully?

Time management for me in this module was nowhere near as maintained as it was in the previous module & in that respect I feel the DVD side of the module suffered. Most frustrating to me was the fact that I know how to produce what I would have liked to achieved, i.e an animated menu sequence with audio and looping sections etc. I just simply didn't allow myself enough time to see out what I wanted to complete.

As with last year, I firmly believe this was down the Christmas break & my reluctancy to get back into the swing of things again. To address this more fully I most certainly need to keep myself busy over the times spent outside of collage & this is something I am pro-actively working on as we speak over this forth coming reading week.

5. Identify 5 things that you will do differently and what do you expect to gain from doing these?

1. Allow more time to explore & complete the final resolution instead of neglecting visual development for research.

2. Be more A LOT more selective in the materials that I source as scanning imagery is particularly time consuming. I have a terrible habit of over-collecting & preparing imagery whilst working with collage; it's a classic case of the 'just in case' syndrome and I end up not using half of what I thought I might.

3. Balance all aspects of the brief. Within the last module I gave more thought to the What is Good? aspect as opposed to the What is Print? booklet. This module I spent 99% of the time producing my idents and neglecting the DVD construction.

4. Work with vector based graphics. Elimating scalability issues is a substantial advantage that saves times & complications. Bitmap is nothing but a headache if you want to alter something after storyboarding.

5. Again be realistic with my blogging, or more appropriately keep on top of it. Posting a lot isn't always effective or necessary, but I do need to be more organised with this.