ougd203 mid point

I wanted to work with an image maker/visualiser. I tend to think of lots of ideas and see them in my head but find it hard sometimes to actually get them down onto paper. Working with someone with strong visualising skills was an attempt to help me learn to improve on this. Charlotte has very strong visualising skills and the thing I've learnt is probably to just spend more time doing it, it's easier to refer back to work when it's clear to begin with. I also wanted to work with someone who was a hard worker and committed to the brief, and this was definitely the case. Gaining confidence in image making was also another aim, I've spent more time on this brief than any other drawing so that's a positive. For submission we used illustrations from both of us, deciding on who's were most appropriate for what. I'm not sure whether or not I've been able to design something with more impact as our design was quite intricate so that's something I still need to do.

What are your specific areas of creative interest in this brief?

My own interests in this brief were designing for an environment, 3D illustration and producing something attention grabbing. We've developed our designs with the intention of it becoming 3D however we haven't actually made it 3D so I don't know how successful our assumption were. I plan to produce the shop front in 3D before module submission to see how well it works. Our interests in the brief were quite similar to begin with, we both wanted to design for a space and try something new.

What specific design skills do you have to offer in relation to your chosen brief? How do you intend to use them?

My design skills to offer were: Problem analysis, idea generation, craft skills, prototypes, photography, motion graphics. These were skills that we thought would be useful for producing a mock up for the shop front. The way we went with the brief resulted in me not using the majority of these skills. Idea generation was probably my biggest input, design wise. I used my knowledge of craft and motion to design the machine for the front of the window but communicated it through illustration rather than producing anything 3D. I spent a lot more time thinking about the problem, and how to approach it, working things out etc rather than actually producing mock ups. But that seems to have suited the partnership because Charlotte was able to visualise the inventions in a suitable way.

What specific non-design skills do you have to offer in relation to your chosen brief? How do you intend to use them?

Non design skills I specified as: organised, maintain communication, realistic goals, confident speaker. As a partnership we maintained communication well, we didn't necessarily work together very much towards the end during production but when it came to meeting up and talking through what we had, we both turned up and communicated well. After discussing our progress and what we had to do we would make plans of what needed to be done, who would do it and when it would need to be done by. As well as being reliable and organised, Charlottes skills for documenting and secondary research were very apparent. These are two areas which I tend to forget to do sometimes and the fact she was doing it made me do it too, until I got into the habit of it. So this is definitely an area I've improved in. I was happy to present our work during crits and Charlotte would then help me answer questions about the work.

what will your specific responsibilities be in the collaboration in relation to your brief?

My responsibilities were to scan in any notes/work and make sure we both had copies, budgeting our money, digital filing and booking times. There wasn't a lot of budgeting to do because we only printed the boards and everything else was drawn. I think we both managed to stick to our roles throughout the brief, and it made it easier to keep track of things.

What will your joint responsibilities be?

Initially we said that we would both be responsible for:
storyboarding, problem analysis, concept, idea generation, presentation boards, scaling, type, tag lines, materials/stock, action plans, target setting, self crits

We didn't actually have to do storyboarding in the end, although I sort of did for the motion of the machine. Everything else we did together.


As a collaborative partnership I think this has been the most successful I have had. We had an equal work share and I was confident that Charlotte would produce what she said she would. We communicated well; both when we were and weren't together. I learnt a lot about the design process, and learnt a lot about other ways of working which I will be able to take on board when working on my own. Working with someone who is keen to use contextual research was also beneficial because this is a weak area of mine which needs improving. As well as identifying areas that I need to improve on, I also managed to identify strong areas of my design process, for example defining a concept and problem analysis. Charlotte has very strong image making skills and so next time I collaborate it might be beneficial to work with someone who has strong type and layout skills so that I can learn from them.

One of the studios I'd contacted got back to me and said that my portfolio was a bit design heavy for what they do. So I decided to put together a selection of some of my drawings. Since I don't have all my work with me at the moment I was a bit limited with what I could put together. It did make me think though, it's probably wise to have a selection of different portfolios to send off, since the different agencies I'm looking at vary quite a lot.

A poster/flyer I was asked to produce to promote an art event within the college. Making use of photographs of the artists work for impact and using type to communicate the details.

Portfolio

This is the portfolio I have emailed to a few of my design heroes to ask for some feedback on.

I sent my portfolio off to a number of design agencies that I think might be interesting to talk to and learn more about their area of design.
The design studios I emailed included a lot of motion graphics studios and I'm not sure whether my portfolio is actually that suitable to send to them. I think they're probably used to looking at show reels, and my portfolio only really shows them the layout of the frames rather than the actual movement.

Studios I emailed include:
Atticus finch, Agile Films, Sherbet, Headgear, Aardman, Pixelgarten, Prologue

With the case of Pixelgarten, I really love their stuff but I just haven;t produced any work that relates to what they're doing for so long. Being on a course that requires lots of ideas quick decision making and varieties of work, I don't feel comfortable that I have enough time to produce 3D craft to a good standard and truly believe it's the best solution to the problem.

Warning: if you don't want to sit cringing in your seat watch this video on mute. Anyway it gives some sort of idea of how I want to make my business card. i.e the folding, not the crabs

Really like these colours, they're quite quirky








I quite like the illustrative side one side, with just a bit of information with the rest on the back. The selective colours make the front and back compliment eachother.



I really like the way the card interacts with it's holder, and the fact it doesn't matter whether it is pulled out or not because all the details are already seen.



Again I like that some of the card is revealed and it's interaction between the holder.

Some drafts for business cards, I really struggled with this but am starting to progress in a direction that I'm a bit happier with.

Some initial ideas for compliment slips:

projection animation test from reanimatr on Vimeo.

Drum Machine

http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/drum

This animation works really well in co-ordination with the sound. The structure of the movement of the characters is quite simple, but the combination of all the different figures and the sound is really effective. I'd really like to try and produce something like this myself.