Pink fluffy dice! I ‘laughed out loud’ when I saw those; those pesky dice have reduced students to tears in the past, so it’s nice to see you relaxing with them. Some lovely, sensitive life drawing here (but you’re right – your current camera is crappy and makes all your drawings look ancient, as if drawn on papyrus); consider taking the time to take your images into Photoshop for a bit of non-invasive post-production – i.e., adjusting the levels until you get a whiter canvas and darker pencil line.
Good reviews (and yet there are only 2 so far – how come?) – but your font is all over the place; can you determine a standard font, in a standard size and use throughout? Give some thought to the presentation of your blog; it’s a bit scrappy and looks very ‘cut and pasted’ and that lurid green template is fighting with everything you post; let your content shine; keep the blog post neutral and professional-looking; at some point, your blog will be your prime marketing tool, so get used to polishing it. Visit 2nd year Leo Tsang’s unit 1 blog from last year for an example of what a great ‘creative development’ blog can look like; the brief was a little different then, but the expectation of what a student can produce in 5 weeks was not. Take the time to work backwards through his posts. This is what a creative project at degree level looks like…
As I commented on a previous post; beware the ‘dressing up as an armadillo’ approach; just as Cronenberg’s mutant wasn’t a giant fly exactly, so might your hybrid be something more ‘inbetween’. I’ve reminded a number of students that this is, at heart, a self-portrait project, so that your own likeness should somehow remain. I’d like to see you generate a series of head-studies in which the first is ‘totally you’ – and then, by the magic of layers and Photoshop, you very gradually relocate the structure of your face to allow your inner armadillo to emerge. Indeed, if you were to draw a complete image of an armadillo’s head and then create a series of drawings that morph your face into its face, you may find that the middle images have unexpected qualities of both! I did like your Photoshop exercises however – particularly the rather melancholy image of the armadillo sort of sitting in profile. A number of students are beginning to think about the ‘mood’ of their portraits; and Monday’s showing of The Elephant Man will certainly make you think about the burden of transformation…
Nothing posted about your essay proposal? Is this a problem – or confidence? I hope it’s the latter; put a post together outlining your ideas for the written assignment asap.
A general reminder that, alongside everything else you need to have ready for crit day, you also need to submit an offline archive of your creative development blog. There is a way of exporting your blog as PDF via Blogger – which would be ideal for this purpose. Incase you missed the original post, Alan gives details here:
And finally – now is the time to return to the brief; time and again, students fail to submit what they’ve been asked to produce – and how; usually because they haven’t looked properly at the brief, or haven’t done so since week one. Trust me on this; just take a few minutes with a highlighter pen to identify what is required, when, and how. Remember – non-submissions are dumb!
Anatomy: Interim Online Review 05/10/2010
ReplyDeleteHey Kay,
Pink fluffy dice! I ‘laughed out loud’ when I saw those; those pesky dice have reduced students to tears in the past, so it’s nice to see you relaxing with them. Some lovely, sensitive life drawing here (but you’re right – your current camera is crappy and makes all your drawings look ancient, as if drawn on papyrus); consider taking the time to take your images into Photoshop for a bit of non-invasive post-production – i.e., adjusting the levels until you get a whiter canvas and darker pencil line.
Good reviews (and yet there are only 2 so far – how come?) – but your font is all over the place; can you determine a standard font, in a standard size and use throughout? Give some thought to the presentation of your blog; it’s a bit scrappy and looks very ‘cut and pasted’ and that lurid green template is fighting with everything you post; let your content shine; keep the blog post neutral and professional-looking; at some point, your blog will be your prime marketing tool, so get used to polishing it. Visit 2nd year Leo Tsang’s unit 1 blog from last year for an example of what a great ‘creative development’ blog can look like; the brief was a little different then, but the expectation of what a student can produce in 5 weeks was not. Take the time to work backwards through his posts. This is what a creative project at degree level looks like…
http://ltsang.blogspot.com/2009/10/final-portrait.html
As I commented on a previous post; beware the ‘dressing up as an armadillo’ approach; just as Cronenberg’s mutant wasn’t a giant fly exactly, so might your hybrid be something more ‘inbetween’. I’ve reminded a number of students that this is, at heart, a self-portrait project, so that your own likeness should somehow remain. I’d like to see you generate a series of head-studies in which the first is ‘totally you’ – and then, by the magic of layers and Photoshop, you very gradually relocate the structure of your face to allow your inner armadillo to emerge. Indeed, if you were to draw a complete image of an armadillo’s head and then create a series of drawings that morph your face into its face, you may find that the middle images have unexpected qualities of both! I did like your Photoshop exercises however – particularly the rather melancholy image of the armadillo sort of sitting in profile. A number of students are beginning to think about the ‘mood’ of their portraits; and Monday’s showing of The Elephant Man will certainly make you think about the burden of transformation…
ReplyDeleteNothing posted about your essay proposal? Is this a problem – or confidence? I hope it’s the latter; put a post together outlining your ideas for the written assignment asap.
A general reminder that, alongside everything else you need to have ready for crit day, you also need to submit an offline archive of your creative development blog. There is a way of exporting your blog as PDF via Blogger – which would be ideal for this purpose. Incase you missed the original post, Alan gives details here:
http://ucarochester-cgartsandanimation.blogspot.com/2010/09/how-to-turn-your-blog-into-pdf-document.html
And finally – now is the time to return to the brief; time and again, students fail to submit what they’ve been asked to produce – and how; usually because they haven’t looked properly at the brief, or haven’t done so since week one. Trust me on this; just take a few minutes with a highlighter pen to identify what is required, when, and how. Remember – non-submissions are dumb!
ReplyDelete