End of Modular Evaluation

End of Module Student Evaluation

BA (Hons) Illustration

Module Code: OUIL503 Responsive

Name: Wilf Dessent

Student ID: wd252989

Please identify where the evidence for each of the learning outcomes is within your submission and how well you feel you have met the learning outcomes. Please also grade yourself in relation to the learning outcomes using terms: poor, satisfactory, good, very good, excellent (Note - This is so that the team have an understanding of how well you feel you have done. It is not an indication of the actual grade you may receive.)

Learning Outcome	Evidenced where? Blog, Visual Journal, Roughs, Final Illustrations, Storyboards, Development Sheets etc.  (No more than 75 words)	Your grade Using words: > poor, satisfactory, good, very good, excellent
5A4:  Make appropriate use of a range of research methods to investigate a topic and produce work relating to the critical, cultural or social context of art and design. (Knowledge & Understanding - Research and Critical Awareness)	This can be evidenced in my Roald Dalh project where I have researched the characters in order to portray their individual characteristics within my designs. I have researched within my own skills, through repetition and refinement of ideas to figure out how I can solve the problems. It can be evidenced on my blog where I have taken influence from different imagery.	Satisfactory
5B3: Generate ideas, concepts, proposals, solutions and/or arguments using the language, materials, processes and techniques of a designated discipline. (Cognitive Skills - Problem Analysis, Problem Solving)	This can be found within my roughing and sketching where I test out how the ideas work, helping me too refine the ideas appropriately. This can be evidence where I use different print process appropriately to the designs I am making, and the visual qualities I’m wanting to achieve. Also the combination of process and medias used together. This can be evidence where I have used the appropriate materials needed to complete the tasks that where set.	Very Good
5C3: Respond to set briefs or proposals in a professional context. (Practical Skills - Visual Quality and Conceptual Development)	This can be evidenced on my blog where I have responded to the correct requirements set by the briefs. It can be evidence in my analysis, where I reflect on my work and judge whether it is going in the direction I intended. And in my development and evaluation of ideas where I judge if the visual qualities/aesthetics are appropriate.	Good
5D3: Exercise self-management skills in managing their workloads and meeting deadlines/apply interpersonal and social skills to interact with others. (Key Transferable Skills, Organisation, Communication and Evaluation)	This can be evidenced where I have planned what materials I need to complete the tasks. Also where I have set myself a time frame to work too in order to complete the briefs on time. It can be evidenced within my ‘Libertine Bar Mural’ where I had to interact with a client and discuss ideas – as well as organizing how the production will pan out. It can be evidenced in my collaborative brief where communication is vital to the progression of the project.	Very Good

Summative Evaluation (See Evaluation Guidance on next page for more information)

You are required to write a 750 word Summative Evaluation of this module.

Please type up your Summative Evaluation in the box below. Make a PDF of the document and post the PDF as your final post on your OUIL503 blog. Also, please cut and paste the text from this box into the final page(s) of your OUIL503 Project Report.

I have found the modular to be very beneficial to my practice, developing technical skills through print process and development of ideas. I have learnt skills outside of my practical skills, things like dealing with a client, pricing my work, organization, time planning and also communicating with people. Communication skills where vital in the collaboration brief, not just arranging where and when to meet, but communicating your ideas to them correctly and making sure they understand what your intentions for the brief are. Organization and planning was vital throughout the modular, time planning was needed when dealing with lots of our own individual deadlines. Lots of organization and pre planning was needed when producing the mural to ensure it all ran smoothly. I have exercised the screen printing process and marble effect a lot within this modular, and I have definitely become more confident with it. I have really enjoyed practicing my large scale spray painting skills, it has been really beneficial for to me to produce a mural and realize how these skills can fit into the industry. It has given me more confidents in my large scale work and given me time to build on my spray painting skills in a much more professional way. I have learnt valuable skills within my character designs for Roald Dahl, looking at ways that I can portray different characteristics using icons, objects and colours – but still presenting them as a matching set for a publication really tested my practical crafting skills. I have developed skills in after effects, taking a similar approach to my 504 animation, I looked further into how my lino prints and how they can translate into moving image. Collaborating on a brief with someone and using a combination of drawing styles has been interesting, it’s a totally different approach to what I would usually take to solving a problem. It can give you confidence in your ideas when you have somebody to constantly reflect on ideas with. Having to keep demonstrating your ideas out load, can help to give the idea the constructive criticism needed to improve it. Collaboration has shown me how team work can be beneficial to your idea generating skills. I was good to practice my skills in after effects but the final production wasn’t exactly what I had in mind, the main things I took from the collaborative brief was how 2 peoples efforts and ideas can be merged into the same creation – I found this interesting and will be relevant when working on real briefs in the industry. The Roald Dahl brief forced me to use photoshop to help construct my final design, even though they appear as screen prints. This has given me confidence in my digital skills and shown me further how it can benefit the process and create designs more efficiently – even when it’s a hand crafted aesthetic. Conceptual thinking and communicating ideas is something that hasn’t been practice as much within this modular compared to others. This could be due to us being able to select our own briefs allowed me to find briefs where I was comfortable with the initial theme. I found each brief easy to approach and the ideas came fairly easy. As a whole his modular has tested skills within final production and printing more than generating ideas for the concepts. I think more contextual researched could have been used within this modular, Because I was fairly set on ideas at early stages I unintentionally missed some of the early research stages. It could have been beneficial to my outcomes if they were influenced by some more external imagery. Within the decks for change brief I found interesting to realize how a previous concept could be re worked and re applied and given a new purpose completely. Looking back at the modular I seemed to approach the competition brief differently to I would with a uni brief, I focused much more on aesthetic and weather I was happy with how it looked and the energy it gives off, rather than trying to fit my work around a criteria and spend lots of time refining the concept before producing anything final. I feel like over the course of this modular (I think influenced from 504) I have been much more open to new colour combination and working with vibrant colours in general. Things from this modular I want to take forward into future projects will definitely be large scale spray painting, I would love to work on more murals in the future. I will continue to explore screen printing, Lino printing and digital work and how these can all work together.  Also specific screen printing methods like marbling is something I will continue to use. I will also continue to explore how my pencil like qualities work when screen printed – how could these work when combined with lino? Combining multiple types of print process is something I will continue to explore.

Project Report

Design Boards

The Libertine...

Roald Dahl...

Decks for Change...

Loop de Loop

Collaborative Brief - Loopdeloop - Final Animation

Please ignore the bright blue boarder in final animation - these where not supposed to be there.

Sound effects
We downloaded a number of sound effects to fit with the animation:

• 2 different chicken squawking noises - for different times that the chicken squawks.
• Cracking egg sound - for when the egg is opening and closing.
• Bouncing spring noise - for when he jumps out of the egg.
• A classic jack in the box winding sound - for when the handle is winding.

We wanted a funny soundtrack for it, we tried out a few different types of music:

• Some comedy trumpet sounds - they where to slow and random and didnt quite fit with the pace of the animation.
• The austin powers sound track - this suited the vibe of the animation but the sound clip was too long and we couldnt make it fit. We tried chopping up the track to get the parts we wanted but this messed up the rhythm of the song.
• Finally we tried a classic circus sound track - this seemed to fit really well with the pace of the animation and the funny comical theme.

• Im pleased with how the final animation came out, I like how the chickens face worked when being enlarged and warped. It gives a funny comical effect.
• Half way through the production we had the idea to make him pop his head up once and disappear again. This works well and creates tension before he fully jumps out of the egg and starts going crazy.
• I like the overall combination of different imagery. Its interesting to see how my lino print works against other simple graphic imagery. It makes the detail and unusual form of the chicken more powerful
• The loop works well, i'm glad about this because this concept was created due too it working as a loop so im pleased it runs smoothly - and is obviously one of the key requirements in the brief.
• Looking back on it now, one thing I dont like is how the circus soundtrack is way too loud compared to the winding noise at the start.
• Working on the animation at the same time as Roshan worked really well. We could reflect on each others ideas and help each other with the technical problems that we encountered. Because there was a combination of mine and his imagery - we both had indervidual ideas of how the imagery we created would move, so working on it at the same time allowed us to make them happen (without letting one of our ideas take over the whole animation).

Collaborative Brief - Loopdeloop - Making the animation

Roshan's colour testing and experiments...

(left hand side - favourite colour way)

• He tried out some different colour combinations, we both agreed that the blue/orange/red colour way worked the best.
• He tried out two different types of jack in the box - an egg and a normal box. They both look good and work well with the chicken. But we decided the egg box would improve the concept and make it more interesting.
• I like the rough graphic brush strokes - they work nicely with the bold black line qualities of the chicken and box.

• I took my finished print into photoshop and detached all the sections I wanted to animate.
• We had initially had ideas about moving the neck and wings but I didn't want to overcomplicate the movements - we would focus on movements within the head.

• Roshan made all the separate sections off the egg box needed to make it wind up and open.
• The animation for this will be simple - Simple movements will be more effective like a simple cartoon, this will be put more exaggeration on the chickens movements. 

• Together we made this background - taking ideas from Roshans testers. We took the same brush strokes and colour scheme, but made a composition that looks like the corner of a room.
• I thought it would be good to try and make the chicken seem as though it is in a room, rather than floating on a screen.

Collaborative Brief - Loopdeloop - Lino Printing the Chicken

• I took ideas from the chickens in the Fantastic Mr Fox lino print. I like the body shape with the long neck it would work well springing out of the box.
• The idea of animating a lino cut came from my animation in 504, I took one of my Aldous Huxley prints and glitched out the face by moving individual sections - I will take a similar approach when animating this chicken print.

• I sketched this photo of a chicken face because I liked the the look of its weird head piece, but I didn't like how it translated to my drawing. I prefer it with the feathery head dress coming of the back of the head.

• I did larger scale sketches to figure out how I could fit more detail within the shapes.
• I wanted the face to be able to glitch and twist so I needed to make separate sections within the face that I could detach from the rest, and then apply motion to them. 

• When I had an idea of the chicken I wanted I drew it straight onto the lino and carved it out.
• I made changes to the body shape at the last minute, I preferred the look of more squared body shape, with the wings sticking out more - this would work much better when jumping/springing out of the box.
• The rounded body shape looked more like a chicken sat down (not moving), this is more appropriate for a chicken that is going to be moving around.

Here is the final lino print, they printed well and I managed to get solid bold prints - I didn't really want any texture on it to stick to the graphic cartoon style we had discussed. When I saw the first print I thought there could me too much white space within the face, but I think this well give the facial features some space to move within the face when animated. I wasnt sure on the exact section of the face that I would separate - I will figure that out on photoshop when preparing imagery for the animation.

Collaborative Brief - Loopdeloop - Ideas

I wanted to collaborate on an animation brief, I chose to work with graphic designer Roshan, who had skills in graphic design and animation. We looked through some animation briefs and the best and most suited to our skills was the LOOPDELOOP brief.

The brief was to create a looping animation, like a gif, that could play over and over again in a loop. There is new a theme for the competition every year, this years theme is CHICKEN. The animation must be based around the theme of chickens. This was perfect for us too work together on because it was a broad theme that could be approached from lots of different angles. It also could involve character design, which would be good for me to work on as my contribution to the animation.

Ideas:

• We sat down together and talked about ideas for the brief whilst I produced some quick roughs about what was being said.
• We knew we wanted to include a chicken character, we just had to decide on what it would be doing, what would be a good looping action?
• We thought about actions and gestures the chicken could make but it wasn't quite enough, we needed some sort of scenario. We even thought about the chicken head coming off, bouncing round the screen and then attaching back onto his head - this was way to random and doesnt make sense...
• Eventually we came to the 'jack in the box' idea. More like chicken in a box. The idea was to have a crazy looking chicken come jumping out of the box - the face warp and glitch and then go back into the box - looping over and over again.
• I liked this idea because it works really well for the loop, its a short action that we can play around with and make comical and funny.

• Thinking further on the box idea, we wanted to put and egg logo on the box. This then got me thinking and I had the idea to make the whole box into an egg...
• Make the chicken hatch from an egg that is a jack on the box. The egg could have a wind up handle on the side and work in the same motion as a jack in the box but appear as a cracking egg.
• We wanted too add sound effects to the animation - music for when the box is winding, sound effects of the handle winding and egg cracking, and then a squawking sound from the chicken as it springs out of the egg. 

• I made a quick story board to get an idea of the time frame, motions, and what imagery we will need to create for the animation.
• An important think to note will be making the last frame link back to the first frame to create an effective smooth loop.

• The things that needed to made where, A chicken, A egg jack in the box, and a simple shape based back ground.
• Because I was familiar with character design, my job was to create a lino printed chicken - lino because we wanted the aesthetic to be quite shape based and 2D - no tone shading or shadows. Also lino cuts are interesting to animate and will work well to glitch and twist up - because it is built up of lots of different sections that could be moved individually.
• Roshan was going to create the jack in the box, and the back ground - We wanted them to be made from simple digital shape, so they are straight forward to animate and keep the focus on the chicken character.
• We decided we would both work on the animation together at the same time, After we had both made all of our imagery individually. This would mean we can both have a say in how the animation will move and discuss what works as we go. Rather than one person make a judgement - we could reflect on each others ideas and not have to make changes that the other person had decided.

Illustration Friday - STOMP

The task was to make an illustration in response to the word stomp. 

• Recently I have been drawing long exaggerated arms, so I thought about how this idea could work as a big leg instead...
• I used some triangles to try and help demonstrate the stomping motion.

Final Sketch...

• After completing the decks for change brief - I wanted to create the final outline from a pencil sketch because it has a nice line quality.
• I scanned in the pencil sketch and darkened it all, I also removed any white so it was only the outline on a transparent background.
• I wanted too mimic the colour blend screen print effect but produce it digitally.
• I took the one of the colour blend backgrounds from the Roald Dahl and re used it for the colour behind the outline.
• I did this by colouring in pink and blue sections of the character normally with paint brush tool. And then using different overlay effects to make the texture appear where I had layed colour down.
• Im really pleased with how managed to mimic the effect, it looks as though it has been screen printed. I will defo consider how illustrations can be constructed digitally and re-use images from other briefs/projects - especially in small briefs and quick tasks. 

'Decks for Change' Competition Brief - Final Submission

• I chose to submit this colour way for the final. The green tree helps to understand the concept.
• I put it on a off white background to help contain the image, and pop out the plain white.
• One subtle improvement I would make is to put more black shadow around it, and especially around the hand at the top because it doesn't stand out enough.
• The process overall has been really successful, using a pencil outline to create the positive works really for me, and is good way of turning my pencil line quality into a finalised image. I have experimented with it before but not to this extent.
• The method of doing lots of different colour blends all at once was a good efficient way of getting loads of variations of the same design - I will look at where this can be beneficial in future work. 
• You can experiment and discover things within the screen printing process - I had no idea how the colours would turn out.
• Its nice to see how my designs look when designed and applied to a real product, it gives an idea of where my work can be used in the real world.

Submitting:

To submit they asked for a short summary about the concept and some information about myself:

Posting on Instagram...

• Shortly after the deadline for submitting, me and Kierans deck designs both got posted on the 'decks for change' Instagram page.
• Though this was worth noting on my blog because we where the only two people who got posted on the insta before the winners, we weren't winners but im guessing by this that we came pretty close, thats good enough for me!
• Its also funny how out of all the submissions and ones in Australia, it was me and Kierans who got posted.

'Decks for Change' Competition Brief - Screen Printing

Final Positives:

Printing Process:

• These where the colours I mixed to create the colour blends with: Fluorescent pink and yellow, lilac and baby pink, plus a bit of green that I found in the print room to re use. (the green to put where the tree is - I wanted to experiment with how I could control the colour blends, and see if I could contain the green where only the tree is.) 

• I did loads of different types of blends, some with all colours dotted across the screen, and some with just two colours split.
• I really enjoy working with colour blends and experimenting with how different colours work with each other.

• This was my first time paper screen printing using the boards rather than the vacuum beds. At first I thought lining them up could be more difficult but I found it worked really well and I managed to line up every print perfectly. 
• If I was printing more layers then I think the vacuum would have been needed, but for a two layer print - I will defo use the boards in future.
• Some of the blends worked much better than others, this all depends on how much ink is left on the screen and mixed together. Its important to scoop off the mixed ink after a few prints - to ensure the colours are vibrant and differentiate enough. 

Favourite Prints...

1 & 2

3

4

• These four prints above summarise the different types of blends that worked best. These are the prints I will be choosing from too submit.
• I don't usually work with these sorts of colour pallets - Im pleased with how they look, I will be more open to using new colour pallets after this and not stick to ones a know.
• Prints 1 & 2 are more subtle and smooth, where as 3 & 4 are more contrasting and vibrant.
• I really like the split colour in 4, it looks like a drum stick sweet. It was interesting to see how the black changed how the colour looked - before the black you could barley see the yellow.
• I think number 3 must be my favourite, a mash up of all the colours with a green tree. Im really pleased with how the green is contained, although it leaks out of the tree slightly, I think its a nice affect and works with the concept of the tree being absorbed by the characters.
• Looking at them all together now, I think if number 4 had a green tree - this would have been the ideal colour combination.