26th November 2010 - (Late first entry due to bereavement of a close family member)
Current Project(s):
148DVA Integrated Design 1 | 2010-2011
149DVA Typography 1 | 2010-2011
This week I began looking at the robot project. On entry into the studio I managed to join a new group. The members of my team are;
- Megan Roy
- Zoe Shackleton
- Paul Harris
Megan and I quickly came up with some ideas on the Monday afternoon by having a brief research through some x-rays or arms. We got a good idea of how the natural mechanism works. We decided that using the bones in our project would give it quite an interesting, and maybe slightly morbid, effect. We decided to make the bones out of foam and drafted them from images we found on the internet.
Throughout the remainder of the week we spent the time cutting and sanding down the main bone structures which were the humerus, the radius and ulna. Once we felt that this was done we began looking at how they might fit together and how we could fashion a pulley system to replicate the movements of the triceps and bicep.
Paul and I went to a DIY store to collect some hooks to hold the thread. We did initially want to use wire on the pulley system but after testing it we discovered that we couldn’t really find the flexibility in any wires that wouldn’t cause wear and tear and end up snapping the wire after a few uses. I had some wool left at home which I had been saving for some kind of knitting project. I brought this in for us to use and it gave us the flexibility that we needed. This ball of wool was later used as part of the head.
Once we had all the parts we decided to paint the bones using emulsion paint. This would act as a base for the spray paint we intended to use. To make the bones seem more futuristic and robotic we decided to use metallic silver spray paint. This gave quite a good effect once we added the hooks and wool. We then wound around some metal for further effect.
After we had made our part of the robot we then had to correlate our arms with other groups such as the hands and the ribs group. We decided to get some duct tape to connect the hands to the arms. This connection was inspired by the carpal tunnel. We then connected the humerus to the rib cage by using some available wire coat hangers which turned out to be the perfect shape and size. I do however feel that there could have been more effort in the overall graphic design group when it came to connecting all the body parts. It seemed a bit too on-the-spot. Next time I think that if we make more effort to communicate, throughout the development of the parts, there will be less time spent merging the different sizes and shapes. We should have had a group discussion of what parts were to be made and how these would work together. For example, there was no group doing the skull, which could have benefitted the merging of the eyes, ears, mouth and brain group.
Overall I think this part of the project went quite well. There were a few initial difficulties in communicating within our group (possibly due to the shortened time scale). I think in the next stage of the project, the group website, I will put a bit more effort into communicating with the rest of the group.
3rd December 2010 -
Current Project(s):
148DVA Integrated Design 1 | 2010-2011
149DVA Typography 1 | 2010-2011
This week I began putting some more focus on my letterbox part of the Typography project. When I came into university, at the beginning of the week, I discovered that Paul Harris had been looking at the same story as I was planning to; The engagement of Prince William. I decided that I would change my news story. The story which I decided to take on was Paris Hilton doing community service as I felt that this would be the most beneficial to my personal style of working. I like to work with something that I can take a lot from and Paris Hilton is always surrounded by controversy. This story would also give me the opportunity to work with some more metaphorical and conceptual imagery as there are conflicting views and opinions behind her lifestyle.
I began writing down some of the ideas and made sure that I didn’t wander to far away from the project brief by adding more solid and factual elements like the shades and jewelry she was wearing. Which was the main focus of the story. I didn’t want to wander to far away from the brief. I also took a look at the typographical piece of this module. The text did seem quite daunting. There are many complex metaphors and extended metaphors in the text and I’ve been quite worried how I can simplify some of it with so much going on. I have however sat down and had a really detailed look into it and decoded some of the things I didn’t fully understand. This gave me a better idea of what sort of angles I could take with it. I might look more into romantic poetry, especially with the references to the smell of opium. The reason I thought that this might be a good angle was because Romantic poetry often refers to situations in a very metaphorical light. The poets in the Romantic movement usually look beyond the obvious and everyday. Which is why the sense of smell is quite unique because it looks at the things we normally don’t take notice of in our everyday lives.
This week I have also been looking at improving my awareness of deadlines and therefore have made my own little Gantt chart to make things a bit more obvious to myself. This is something which I previously used in my ICT A level.
11th December 2010 -
Current Project(s):
148DVA Integrated Design 1 | 2010-2011
149DVA Typography 1 | 2010-2011
This week the rest of the class handed in the letterbox and an exercise in style work for marking. I stayed behind with some others in the class after to walk around and look at some of the work which others had submitted. There was some really inspirational work and it made me feel a bit more confident about my own so far.
I spent much of this week producing parts of my box. Three sides have been put together so far. I have bought some polyfiller for some of the outside sides of the box and to further fuse the sides of the box to give it more strength. I wanted to make a brick wall, on the outside, which matched the one Paris Hilton was painting in the news stories. I did this by smoothing over a thin layer and using the rough side of a sponge to give it a stone texture. Then I dragged in some lines to outline the bricks. I then painted over this, in emulsion, with the colour used in the photos. I then used the emulsion as a base for creating emulsion transfers of some of the news of the world article I had I managed to find plenty of photos and references to the same stories by going out and buying cliche magazines like Heat. It pained me to buy them but I really needed them for research and to use in my project. I wanted to cover some of the walls inside with articles about Paris so that it was like the wax carving of her was entombed with them. What was interesting though was when I found that one magazine, which I will include inside the box, was actually praising her. They literally referred to her in a heroic light. Other things which I intend to add to the piece is some old negatives form a camera. I thought it might be interesting to make a window into the box with the negative. So that the viewer can grasp the idea that the real issues are manipulated and difficult to see through the eyes of the media.
The main feature of the piece is the wax carving of Paris Hilton, pulling away from or being sucked or maybe even becoming part of the media. I thought it might be better to leave this decision to the viewer to draw their own conclusions. Either way I wanted the image to look unnatural so the choice to use wax seemed quite certain. I have never worked with wax or 3D modelling before so it took a few attempts to get the face so that it was recognisable, especially on such a small scale. The overall effect of the main feature, was that it creates an eery and aberrant atmosphere. I hope to enhance this by using a juxtaposition between grungy textures and indulgent jewelry. 17th December 2010 - (Last week at University)
Current Project(s):
148DVA Integrated Design 1 | 2010-2011
This week I began to take a brief look at the sort of thing that might be part of the website. I know what kind of layout I will probably be using but I think I need to spend a bit more time looking into more contexts of the arms over the holidays. I am especially worried about the HTML coding as I’m unfamiliar with this and would be far more at home creating the website on dreamweaver. When I get back to University I will be going to the library to get a book which I can look at to browse over some of the basics. I have quite a few ideas but I’m worried they might not be properly developed with the restrictions of the HTML coding. I hope that it won’t be as difficult as visual basics, which I used for my A Level I.T. project.
I also handed in my project earlier than the extended deadline which I was given. I chose to do this because after seeing what some of the other members of my class had produced I felt confident in my box. There were some quite interesting ideas and interpretations of news stories. I felt that we should have been given a bit more of an opportunity to explain our designs though. I feel that they might be better interpreted than on their own merit because then it gives us a better amount of leverage for subtlety.
I think I probably have done the best on the box because this is what I spent the majority of my time developing, and mostly because this is what I had the most fun experimenting with and exploring my personal style of working. I am almost as proud of my typographical part of this project. I found the actual translation of the piece quite difficult because there were a large amount of things going on. There were many metaphors and concepts and it was difficult to create the simplistic piece which I wanted. I tried to encapsulate some of the complexity of the piece by placing it on a par with romantic poetry. I felt this was most appropriate because it would allow the reader to look at the piece in a new light by bringing them closer to consideration of each individual line and its numerous meanings.
I found the restriction to a monochromatic colour scheme easy to stick to but I did struggle with having to come up with a decent idea that doesn’t involve images. I fear that I may have restricted my creative flow by keeping myself somewhat isolated from the rest of the group over the previous weeks. This means that my ideas have been too focused and not really open to being pulled in different directions. I think I can probably improve on this by taking my idea out on context and into the studio more.
15th January 2011 - (Return to University)
Current Project(s):
148DVA Integrated Design 1 | 2010-2011
147DVA Design in Context | 2011
This week we received our marks for the work which we handed in before the holidays. I was quite disappointed with my mark. I felt that I deserved a better grade because I had worked hard on my pieces, however I will reserve judgement until I receive the feedback.
The mark has definitely affected the way in which I see my work because I was perhaps a little bit too complacent when handing it in. However I’m not sure whether this is just taking pride in my work. Something to consider in future.
When I was discussing my work with one of the members of the class, Tom Fitzmaurice, he let me have a little feedback, something which I lacked on creating the piece. He thought it had been badly presented and gave me some pointers on how to improve this next e.g. by not having a white edge around the typographical piece by printing it onto A3 and then cutting it out to A4 size. This was something I hadn't really thought about before.
This week we received our next brief, design in context. This consisted of an essay, which I had been hoping to receive for quite a while now as I love writing, and a book cover design.
On receiving the book cover design brief I went out to town the next day and after scouting around several Waterstones’ book shops I was able to salvage one of the last copies which had not been snapped up by someone else on my course.
I began reading the book this week and have managed to make quite a reasonable progression. One of the disappointing things was how quickly the story moved along without allowing time to build up scenery and characters. This meant that it would be quite difficult to use these as a focus for the book cover. After all, it would be quite difficult to show the blossoming of a romance when there was practically no build up to the first moment of passion. This was disheartening as I had hoped to take elements from the beginning of the book as I feel that these are the best parts to draw from. You can show an element of the story where effectively everything gets in to motion whilst also tantalizing any passers-by with interesting elements of the book e.g. a suspicious gaze across the room between characters or the first touch of hands.
22nd January 2011 -
Current Project(s):
148DVA Integrated Design 1 | 2010-2011
147DVA Design in Context | 2011
After reading a bit more of the book this week I have mostly been able to come up with un-original ideas which involve speckles of blood. Mostly. I have been reluctant to commit these to paper as they will not be relevant to my final piece. I want to be subtle with my work and draw on simplicity if I can.
The book was ultimately something which I would not normally read in my spare time. The whole storyline was more or less predictable and didn’t give me much analytical detail to work with. I suppose this will pay off if I’m expecting to be simplistic anyway. Before I began producing a cover for the book I decided that I wanted to know about the actual content. This should give me some guidance on what sort of genre to research and what sort of books I would have usually been competing against.
But enough about the content of the book. My general idea is to draw on key moments in the book. Or even to draw on multiple moments. Perhaps something conceptual so that multiple meanings can be taken from it or so that reader can see it from different perspectives throughout the book.
This week I have also been preparing and doing my group video pitch for the website. As there has been a lack of communication I decided to just with my own ideas and pitch exactly what I hoped to create in my website. To test my confidence levels and see how I could deal with presenting work I decided to record myself talking about my website ideas and add a few images.
The video initially went terribly. I couldn’t get my words out and I was stuttering and falling over myself. So I invited a friend, who is familiar with theatre, to help me.
You may well ask why I look like I have just finished laughing in some parts of this video. This is because my friend thought I needed to smile more, and achieved this by saying various rude phrases moments before pressing record. This helped a lot and I managed to relax a bit more and suddenly I found myself being to speak a little bit easier. One thing I didn’t notice until I had finished recording was that the cheerful nervousness caused me to swing my legs on the chair, creating a rather embarrassing appearance of me shimmying towards the camera. However I thought this was quite funny so decided it would be better to keep it in. Furthermore it took me a lot of courage to get to just saying the words when facing a rather daunting camera.
Overall, when I had completed the video I felt like I had achieved quite a lot, as I can be quite a shy person. I enjoyed the challenge of making the video a bit more personal.
When we met to fuse the parts of the pitch it did fit together quite well despite the fact that we hadn’t spoken much. It received good feedback and one of things which we had all picked up on was that people got the impression that our website had quite an energetic feel to it.
I soon realised that mine was on a par with other groups’ pitches once we began watching the videos. This made me feel much better and I was quite proud. Despite going red when my face came up on the screen.
The video featured here is an unedited part which I filmed, just so you can see the nervousness and drink every time I shimmy forward... it's terrible. I know.
You may also notice that due to the bad sound quality of the video, I have a slight lisp. Yay. ¬_¬
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