Critical Analysis - Contextual Studies

Portfolio

Strengths
-Had a minimalistic layout - didn't look too complicated
- Was organised into sections and neat looking
-Shows a variety of photography types, letting viewers know my range of skills

Areas for Improvement
-Content limit - more photos could have been added
-Not much information, add text for details
-No contact information or details about me

3 Things I've learnt by completing these tasks
-Important to get yourself out there online
-It can prove quite challenging to make your own website
-Constantly keep creating content

Presentation

Strengths
-It was to the point and concise
-Arranged in an easy to understand manner
-Good choice of goals

Areas for Improvement
-Too simplistic - add photos maybe?
-Short length, add more information/goals? Go into more depth
-Present it better - use gestures, face the audience etc

3 Things I've learnt by completing these tasks
-Work hard to get into uni - the sooner the better
-Do independent research/work outside of college
-Contribute/go the extra mile in lessons

FMP - Research/Experimentation Reflection

During the research period of my FMP I hoped to find out how the final product of my FMP should turn out and what I should include in it. I produced both primary and secondary research - primary through the form of a survey, experimentation and looking at similar products to mine, and secondary through looking online and in books about design & magazine production etc. Out of both of these methods I found primary to be more useful as you could choose what to look at specifically, as well as getting answers more related to your project. I found out a lot of new information through research but the most effective was inspiration (looking at similar products) and what to include in my magazine (survey).

After this research taking place I feel like the project is a lot more organised in my head and I have a clearer idea of what has to be done. If I had to list the three most important findings I discovered in my research they would be design skills, camera skills and what to present in my magazine. From this research my idea has become a lot more refined and focused on specific subjects.

Reflection - Interactive

For the past term with Steve we have been learning all about animation and how to use the program 'Adobe Animate'. Over these lessons I have learnt a lot about the program which I had little knowledge on before, and created many digital animations. We started by learning the basics of the program and understanding what it does for the first few lessons, then advanced onto learning it's specific tools and features. Since I started I feel like I have gained a lot of knowledge about digital animation and Adobe Animate. There's some things which I can still improve on like making longer animations or learning even more of the programs functions such as the bone tool, however I'm confident in making small animations using the variety of features I've already learnt.

One more thing which I learnt was how to incorporate my animations together into an interactive product using Adobe Muse, giving it the ability to become a functioning website or app. This is useful to know and produces a professional looking product.

This is the first animation I made in our interactive lessons
when messing around with the program. As you can see
I had some basic knowledge of the program prior to teaching.
It's fairly clunky and could be improved by adding more detail
or making the movements more realistic.

This is an animation I made in Animate to experiment with
motion tweens. Again it works but could have more detail.

This is an animation I made frame by frame to experiment with
the technique. It took a fairly long time to do however I was
pleased with the rough style result.

I made this animation experimenting with shape tweens, something
I had no idea how to use before these lessons. It was easy to do
and created a unique looking animation.

I created this scene using symbols to duplicate the penguins as
opposed to drawing them out repeatedly. This was a new skill
that I learnt.

This is a reference sheet I created for my character 'The Blob'. I learnt how to
do this in Steve's lessons and it turned out very helpful for when I came to
make animations for this character.

This is an animation I made of the Blob
eating for the final interactive product
I made. It's smooth and is a big
improvement from the first animation
I made. It could be improved however
by making it a little slower.

Stop Motion Reflection

In the past 2 weeks with Steve we've been focusing on animation. When I first found this out I was pleased because I find stopmotion fun and quite nostalgic as I used to watch a lot of Wallace and Gromit, Morph and Shaun the Sheep. As well as this, I used to do some stopmotion myself with lego, but when we came to do the tasks I was a little rusty.

In lessons we watched some animated shorts which I enjoyed a lot as they were all quite different from each other and looked visually engaging to me. The variety in each animation showed us how stopmotion is a creative artform and doesn't have many boundaries. For example we watched Svankmejers "Darkness, Light, Darkness" which used plasticine and meat/body parts to animate with - an interesting technique I'd never seen anything like before. In contrast to this, we watched "The Fat Cat" which used wax as an animating medium.

Overall, the past two weeks have been intreguing and have helped us explore into the world of stopmotion in depth. I went on to watch more of Svankmejer's shorts and other less popular Aardman shorts after these lessons. We also had a go at doing stopmotion ourselves which proved time consuming, but the end result is appealing to watch as you can see the characters you've created move by themselves in an environment you've created. Below is a very short stopmotion me and Max made on the theme of winter.