END OF YEAR REFLECTION REPORT:

CONCRETE EXPERIENCE:

As I began this course in the year of 2014 in September I will remember how inexperienced I really was in the world of art as all of the practical work and various modules hit me like a brick, except this brick didn’t hurt but made me burst from excitement for the duration of the course. I have had various experiences with different types of formats within the first year of this course, from illustration to animation, from 2D, 3D, pixilation and stop motion. During this time I found that my major strengths were with 2D and coursework and research however through these experience I found one of my major weaknesses lies with development work as I find it rather difficult and most likely forget to produce notes based around my production depending on module. During the entirety of this year I feel that I am much more motivated to practice my artwork. Overall throughout the entire year we have done a various amount of work ranging from 3D models and rigging body models to producing various types of illustrations through life drawing sessions to metamorphosis. Throughout all of this practical work I have produced in my opinion mediocre work and over the summer I plan to practice in the subjects that I am most passionate about this mainly consists of illustrations and story telling so this will delve mainly into script writing and producing various illustrations and designs and different techniques and methods. Overall I believe that I can improve my skills through practice development.

REFLECTIVE OBSERVATION:

Overall throughout the entire year I believe that I have done okay and I haven’t really pushed myself to the limit and tried as hard as I can so I believe that most of the work that I have produced during this year is valuable experience for me and I believe that it is important to learn from these experiences and work harder within the second year, mainly for each module I believe that I had given the bear minimum to pass, to improve on this I believe I should produce as much development as I can and follow the criteria as much as  I can and schedule my time so that I have a structured time table for work. I believe that my timetable of my work over the year definitely needed improvement and that I did not structure my work schedule well enough. Mainly through all of the modules I felt that these experiences are readying me for the animation and illustration industry and through these modules I understand that there are delicate and important processes that we must go through to create a good animation or illustration. I believe that my main weaknesses throughout these modules were the 3D and animatics modules; if I wish to improve on these tactics I believe that I must practice creating storyboards and attempting to review various 3D techniques using cinema 4D, Mainly I believe that if I tried hard enough I would reach my real potential and as I was rather unfocused this year due to various factors I believe that I couldn’t put in as much effort as I hoped.

ABSTRACT CONCEPTUALISATION:

If I wish to improve on my main weakness and get better at my strengths I believe that I must practice various different animation and Illustration techniques over the summer. I have various different ideas for my summer project and I am incredibly eager to dive in and explore ideas such as creating an illustrated story and creating a comic etc. However to really improve on my weakness such as 3D and storyboards I must practice these, with improving on storyboards I must just practice creating stories and setting scenes for them. With improving on 3D I believe that watching online tutorials will be extremely helpful for my, although I do not wish to follow 3D as my particular style however I believe that it will be incredibly useful to know how to create 3D models and how to rig them, overall I believe that my main weakness is with modelling 3D models and creating a concrete model I believe that over the summer I must at least try to create a simple model in cinema 4D. Most importantly I must try to organise a well structured work time table to fit in and around my daily life, if I construct and follow this time table then I hopefully will have a well structured pattern to follow so that I can accomplish as much work as I can and use my time efficiently and correctly so that I can produce the most work within the specified amount of time, time management skills are my major concern at the moment as this will effect how much work is produced and how well it is produced.

ACTIVE EXPERIMENTATION:

To put all of my ideas into practice I believe that it is important that I do look at tutorials for 3D modelling and that I attempt to create a simple 3D model within cinema 4D, I believe that a good idea for this is a stick figure body or a slender one legged body as I feel that it will become more difficult the more appendages that are involved the more difficult that I will find it, furthermore I hope to add more experience in creating story boards as within our summer project we are supposed to create storyboards I will used this to my advantage and practice various different scenarios so that I can get better at creating story boards. And finally to improve on one of my main concerns of time management I believe that it is important for me to create a schedule time table for me to follow over the summer and mainly create a well structure time table that can work around my personal time table, I believe that if I work hard in a certain amount of time each day I will be able to improve drastically.

Artist Research:

Birdo:

Birdo is the name of a street artist based in Toronto his work is various and he started out like any other graffiti artist by spraying his name on other properties, his work is colourful and vibrant it catches the eye instantly if you were walking past. The creation of the work that he has done all varied types of designs:

As you can see this artist uses various colours and various different styles and a wide range of designs, such as mammals to sea creatures his style varies from each street art that he performs.

Brosmind:


Brosmind is the group of illustrators and they provide a variety of work, their style within each of their illustrations is very vibrant and colourful. The line work of the illustrations is very neat and smooth.

Each of their work provides a variety of concepts and a variety of colours and themes, I enjoy this as their work is not just limited to certain concepts or features.

Joan Cornella:

Joan Cornella is a famous comic strip artist, usually Joan Cornella's work is rather offensive and delves into the depths of the weird. Usually Joan Cornella's pieces in my opinion addresses certain controversies within society.

Although he does address certain issues however most of his work is generally filled with weird humour. 

Hikari Shimoda:

Hikari Shimoda provides a various amount of different work, within her work she uses a various amount of colours giving a vibrant look to the illustrations, hikari states that she is mainly inspired by the events of chernobyl and includes facts about it within her illustrations, for example she includes the incident of removing radiation within the childs neck.

However her work is still very vibrant and contains innocent concepts although most of her work is based around a horrific event in history, in my opinion I really love her work and I think that its beautiful and I am so inspired that something so beautiful is inspired through a horrific effect.

Nicolas Menard: 

Nicolas Menard work in my opinion is rather simple or a collection of simple drawings making the overall illustration appear complex. Nicolas Menard uses very vibrant colours and this stands out to the  audiences eyes. I like his work as it is rather colourful and simple and there is more direct attention towards the characters of the illustration as it has simple backgrounds and features.

Mr Kat:

Mr Kat mainly works with 3D models, he works with various shapes from snakes to cats and tigers, within pictoplasma Mr Kat had various types of exhibitions. In my honest opinion I like the style of the 3D models however the 3D format does not really interest me, so I would not know the formats of the 3D models were made however his style is very nice and it is obvious that he has various concepts.

Andy Ristaino:


Andy Ristaino is an illustrator who works within the project of Adventure Time, his illustrations are filled with colour and are highly vibrant and pleasant to the eye. He draws various kinds figures within his illustration although some may be terrifying however the use of vibrant and neon colour makes the illustrations appear lively and creates a positive atmosphere.

Tado:

Tado work with various types of materials, they produce 2D work, 3D and even produce vinyl toys. Tados work is very vibrant and colourful and I am really inspired by this group of artists as they use very colourful designs, and they have also designed various things that are rather cartoonish and child like, Tado has produced designs for red nose and they have also produced designs for astro boy and hello kitty.

CAAD Session: Auto Rigging

During this thursdays CAAD session we learned how to auto rig a ready made mesh and make it move. Within the CAAD session we learned that within the character menu we could chose an attribute called character and then we chose a template for auto rigging a mesh.

We added various joints and components for the character we chose a bird and then we added the joints for the wings and the legs and the neck etc, and it was effortless to insert these factors to affect the body structure. Each button inserted a wing, legs etc to create the body structure. 

We then used pre made body models and then set up a character rig for the model. We inserted the auto rig and then we moved certain parts of the rig to match the body model, we then took the skin and the mesh and we moulded the rig to the character model. We then began to animate the body mesh. However within my animated 3D model as the root was difficult to move so the mesh began to be affect mainly within the tail area, as the root was based within the tail area.