To Develop Self as Designer

Dear Robin, please excuse me for there will be a long speil of text here, I promise there will be pictures later, I just want to get all the words off my chest first ;)

I find it possibly coincidental that my skill as a DESIGNER is coming to my attention at the same time as this competeny. Lately, especially as we are nearly through for the year, I have had chance to refelct on my work so far and to be very honest with myself, I have not improved as I ought to in my strengths as a designer. Watching, especially, two of my favourite peers Aaron and Emily develop their own talnets to a very impressive degree has been not only inspirational, but also a real reality check for my own work. I can't help but note that it is something similar in their work = ILLUSTRATOR. It is their improvement with the vectors that produces such impressive work from them both. I wanna do more impressive vector work! :0

For our major vector peice, Jo wants us to do something impressive, she showed us the trumpet that looked like a photo and, of course, I immediately wanted to do a face. Since joining DeviantArt (go visit!: http://freyals.deviantart.com) I have been completely addicted to trawling the site for awesome work, I get very inspired from seeing other peoples stuff, and I have seen some AMAZING vector faces that has been incredibly inspiratrionmal in my quest to do a realistic vector face (I know Robin, who would have thought ;p ) So this is something else I really want to acheive.

I also want to realise my vision for my Flash project.

I think at this point I will outline my learning plan:

Learning Plan

What are you going to learn?

~ I want to develop my vector style, and strengthen my design skills further with vectors.

~ I want to achieve a photo-realist face with vectors, or at least as close as I can.

~ I want to realise my original vision for 'Mary Had a Little Lamb' in Flash.




How are you going to learn it?

~ Well, the whole overall design strengthening is somehting that is going to be ongoing (indeed, quite possibly it is always ongoing, even for great designers) for example, I think over the hoklidays i might take up some of our print briefs through the year and redo them to a level that I am very happy with. I have been studying great vector designers, such as the very talented Joe Whyte and Arthur de Pins, my fellow classmates, reading Emily's Computer Arts/ Design magazines, and of course checking up on the great devArt galleries. I always find I learn best by studying what has already been done, and trying to put my own spin on it, or merging different styles etc. I think more actual hands-on me doing it and less staring at others is going to help too, coz i do do a LOT of staring at others, I love it - looking at other peoples great images is an amwesome stimulation for me - I could (and sometimes have) do it all day - it's coz I'm a taurus u know ;)!

~ Regarding the vector face. Well, it is not as actually hard as i first imagined (at least, the way I'm doing it isn't.) There are basically two methods - each colour is a different shape, or the mesh tool is used. Now, I am a bit scared of the mesh tool, i have had a play with it before, and because I am scared of it, then I must use it (that's what Robin would say I'm sure)however, I am not using it for the face. I am doing the face as lots and lots of shapes, so it's pretty much a time thing (oops, I didn't say that word!) and i have decided that for the clothes I will give the mesh tool a try, so that the picture ends up using both. Anyway, thankfully to devArt, the vector face artists do tell their secrets - You get your photo and posterise it so that each colour does take on it's own shape. I had a quick try with a photo of Adriana Lima, and hey-presto it looked great. For Jo though, I knew I would have to use one of my own photos, so i chose my sister dear. But even after posterising, the picture (not airbrushed at all and taken on a digital camera) is still very mottled, and I am almost ad-libbing the shapes, so it is quite tricky, but coming along slowly. Also, for some reason i can't eye-drop the colours off the bitmap in illusdtrator, so i am doing each colour by eye (OMG) For some reason Dave can do it in CS2, but I only have Illustrator 10, maybe that is the problem!?

~ As for learning the Flash stuff, it was a case of making use of teacher matt's well of knowledge while he was with us - which I did. It is also a case of going back through the 10 flash exrcises to get all of those things down pat (which I pretty much have i think). It's also a case of mapping otu exactly what i want the flash experience to llok like, i have made notes and such, but I think i will write out an exact storyboard for every single scene before tuesday, so that I know exactly how I want it to look, in order to reralise it properly. I really should hunt around the internet and look for other interactive nursery rhymes, or even just interactive kids things. I need to stay focussed on the age group I am targeting ... I dont think i know any 3-5 year olds.


How are you going to know that you have learnt it?

~ To be able to look at something I designed I will know that I am improving. It's just one of those things, I will be able to see it. And hopefully others will be able to see it too.

~ As for the face, well, if I show it to mum and dad and kendelle and nathan and say - "who is this?" and they all say "kendelle, omg It looks so real!" well then, yes. Also, we have to present them to the class in the last week, and my classmates are ususally pretty honest about things (the constructive criticms from everyone is great, we all seem to be able to get across how something might be improved upon without hurting any feelings!) So yeah, if they think it looks like a photo then I will have succeeded. Also, again, I can tell in myself whether it looks real enough or not. I have the vectors over the top of the photo, and if u turn the vector layer on and off, you should only see minor differences between the two.

~ With the flash assignmwent, if it interacts exacly as I had wanted, if it looks how I had planned then I suppose I can say that I had leaned what i wanted to. I think I have kept it relatively simple, although, it willmbe my first time inserting sounds and stuff, so we will see how it turns out. Again I can count on the comment session in class next tuesday to help me.


How are you going to prove that you learnt?

This is a bit of a funny question ...
I suppose for all things being learnt, keeping a record of progress (ie, with a BLOG) helps to prove learning. Also, being able to retain what was learnt and to do other projects based on what was learnt, also to expand past what was learnt into new things. Is this enough to answer this question? (I realise I have said the word "learnt" far too many times just now.)