OUGD102: End of Module Self-Evaluation

1.  What skills have you developed through this module and how effectively do you think you have applied them?
I have done the book making induction, which from that I tried to produce the final box and cd cases using the same technique. However It ended up a bit of a mess because I didn’t think about the thickness of the card so next time I will take more time to design and produce a final using these techniques. I have learnt to look for new research and information that I never knew before and these drove my project to then end. Also I learnt that you can look for other ways to communicate your idea rather than photoshop illustrator flash or hand made as I ended up using playlists on itunes.
2. What approaches to/methods of research have you developed and how have they informed your design development process?
From the first research on reggae I grouped everything to find out what each object ect had in common and compared the groups. From the chosen group which was artwork I then research more into the reggae vinyl’s I had collected then moved onto album artwork being designed by famous designers or interesting information on the album cover and thought this process one thing lead to another into the development which lead to the final.
3. What strengths can you identify in your work and how have/will you capitalise on these?
I thought and enjoyed the research side of the project. I think that it worked well as from my research development it lead into design to final and made it a lot easier than projects ive used research before without developing it. I also learnt that the communication doesn’t have to be photoshop… or hand made look for other possibilities. I thought the iTunes worked really well conceptually and was then adaptable to iPhone as well.
4. What weaknesses can you identify in your work and how will you address these more fully?
I need to take more time on thinking how to produce the final outcome, as in hand made. This became a mess first time I should of made a quick mock up to see it work first and design and think about the technical areas of the design.
5. Identify five things that you will do differently next time and what do you expect to gain from doing these?
Produce more ideas as I only had two that I actually went into detail, this will allow me to understand what I want to produce. Take more time making hand made items, as I need to work out the technical side of the outcomes. Go for one idea/ style as I went for two different ideas into one and it turned into a nightmare. I was still in two minds what to produce as it took me a long time to collect my 100 artwork covers. Try to use folders and notepads that are from the same company as in my folder today it looked all odd. Random sized folders and each part was presented differently. This will add identity to the project as today there were two projects in one folder. Some times I over complicate things when sometimes a simple design will look more effective. I could have more of a balance.
6.How would you grade yourself on the following areas: (please indicate using an ‘x’)    5= excellent, 4 = very good, 3 = good, 2 = average, 1 = poor
	1	2	3	4	5
Attendance		x
Punctuality		x
Motivation		x
Commitment		x
Quantity of work produced		x
Quality of work produced		x
Contribution to the group				x
The evaluation of your work is an important part of the assessment criteria and represents a percentage of the overall grade. It is essential that you give yourself enough time to complete your written evaluation fully and with appropriate depth and level of self-reflection. If you have any questions relating to the self evaluation process speak to a member of staff as soon as possible.

Photoshop Evaluation

OUGD102

For the brief I wanted to keep the back of the 10 A6 postcards simple, with lines for the address, some rectangular shape to place the stamp, a divider in the middle with the pantone colour code with a swatch of that colour.

 

The reason I wanted to put a colour swatch on the back was because from most of my photographs based on green you can see many different shades/ tones of green so I wanted to instruct which colour I was looking at.

 

From my photographs I noticed a lot of the composition of them were in the centre, I didn’t really want them all straight on so I considered the scale and how the image would sit on the rectangular A6 shape.

 

As we had to consider elements of what Photoshop can offer, I decided under the influence of the Detonate club flyers from Nottingham I wanted to use one shape and repeat it in different directions to break the image up, using interesting compositions of the photographs.

 

I decided to use the arrow shape as I think that green as a symbols offers people directions for information for example a fire exit and it instructs people where to leave and first aid kits, where to locate them.

 

I tried to create a layout using arrows in different directions with the green photographs showing from the other side. The arrows however I felt showed to much negative space of white, compared to the look I wanted to go for from detonate influence flyers. From some reason as well it reminds me of dads army, at the start when it shows all the British and German arrows invading each other. It properly doesn’t help, as the photographs were green.

 

If I were to change anything it would be the shapes and layout, I would rather hand draw them out and then scan them in to trace. I feel using the arrows set on Photoshop limited myself, and I would also make the arrows closer together. I really like to composition of five of the photographs but some I wasn’t to sure on until I printed maybe I should of revisited the camera and took some of the photos again? 

Video Elective Evaluation

At the start it took us a while as a group to find a song that we would all enjoy working with to produce visuals for. We left the music decision late, but finally all agreed that Brian’s friend Dan would be suitable to work with. Dan is part of a blues band who plays at gigs quiet often. Because we had Dan we decided we would experiment with the green screen.

We shot the six minute green screen with Dan on from two angles, a medium-long shot and a side view. Because of the nature of the song we decided to base the idea of the film on the less attractive scenes around and in Leeds. The scenes and music would relate to that acoustic homeless person feels.

Separately we went around Leeds to shoot less attractive shots of the city, I based my clips around the more out of town shots, urban. This included abandoned homes, graffiti and rubbish.

When editing the video we all decided what effects and outcome we wanted to gain. The outcome was for the film to be either black and white or a sepia look, with Dan slowly fading in and our shots with the city’s depressing scenes slowly moving in and out using the different opacity.

The music track actually goes on for six minutes so we decided to cut it down to just gone over two minutes as we felt that would be enough time to communicate our idea.

At first I tried to edit the video. The first problem I occurred was transferring the tape in a cassette player because I had handed the camera in. This was a slow process but finally I moved it onto the Mac ready to edit. When I inserted the CD, the audio saved to iTunes, but when I tried to use it in Final Cut, it refused to open it, as it was not in the mp3 format. So I decided for the time being to use the audio captured from the green screen session (which was heavily distorted because we didn’t consider the audio at the time). I then put the scenes of what we captured around Leeds into and order to play with the music and put a grain filter on it and changed the levels to darken the clips to give it that depressing feel.

When I tried to use the footage captured on green screen I realised that we had never set the colour balance so when I tried to select the dark green of the screen it became pixalated and started the take away part of Dan’s jacket and hat. After talking to Brian he said that you could change the colours so it would be brighter and Brian had ago at this and it ended up working really well.

From making this video I learnt to always set the colour balance, use a tripod to get smoother shots and gained experience that I never knew before the music video in Final Cut.

PPD on DP needs changing!