Summative Evaluation

Over the course of the module I have developed a lot of varied skills that have become very useful to me and I am really excited about using again. I have developed skills in After Effects, were I normally find software like that very hard to grasp. I now feel very confident in using the software because of the workshops and personal use and I am already deciding to use it in other modules. I think my animated sting shows that I am confident using the software as I applied many various keyframes in my sting and I was able to correct a colour problem last minute before hand in. I have also gained skills from the various workshops we have had including storyboarding, I found this really helpful when planning my animation and how sound is very important and can totally change an animation.

I have also screen printed for the first time in this module, I found the induction really helpful but it wasn’t until I was in the print room for three days until I learnt how to do it all properly, from washing the screens, exposing to printing. I now feel confident enough to go into the printing room and screen print without any help. I now would like to create more intricate drawings for screen print as I think they would like really nice screen printed, especially after seeing other screen prints in the crit.

I have also developed more skills in Photoshop and InDesign as I have used both of these softwares in my project. These skills have helped me create negatives for screen printing, page layouts and general development for my work.

In this module I have used Screen Printing, mono printing and digital print. I initially was thinking about just mono printing as it is something I have done numerous times before hand and I felt confident using it although, through investigating the other methods of printing and learning the skills I needed to use them, I played around and it concluded in me using all three methods. I am really happy that through development and playing with different methods od image making I pushed myself into trying out new things that I haven’t used before, which is what I would like to push myself to do further along in the course.

A strength within this module have been my ability to use After Effects to the point where I feel very confident in using the software and now I aim to use these skills in my other modules. I have also pushed myself to learn new things in this brief and I have now got the initial skills to develop and progress in them, this also widens my opportunities for future work. I have also tried to steer away from thinking literally, I am now going to strive to work this way from now on.

A big weakness of mine is keeping up with blogging regularly, I tend to forget the evaluative process once its so far back and now I have realized that if you blog straight away, you can evaluate and comment on the work when it is fresh in your mind. Another weakness of mine is not playing about enough, I think I could improve on how much development I do and trying new methods, as I have found out in this brief that the times when I have done more and tried new things is when I have made a pivotal decision in my work.

Next time I would definitely do more development to go with my research, as it is were all my ideas get generated. I would also like to keep on top of my blogging so it doesn’t become a hindrance later on down the line and the posts will be a lot more useful and evaluative. I would also change the way I approach a brief, I think my biggest problem was at the beginning I was thinking too literally, which was the time I should be playing with media and drawing. I also would learn more about each process and software in my personal time, as I did need a lot of assistance at first, when I could have possibly learnt a lot by myself and trying things out. I would also Screen print earlier than I had, as I didn’t plan for last minute hiccups and when in the professional practice, this is something I would plan a head for deadlines.

Pivotal Moments In the Module

Project Proposals

New Animation

Oliver Sacks Sting 2 Colour from Alice Franklin on Vimeo.

After the crit yesterday and being really unsure about my sting with it being 4 colours, i decided to try my best to change it. I spent a while trying to work out how to change the colours on After Effects so i didn't have to remake the whole thing.

I changed the characters to all black on After Effects using the hue and saturation effect and then i changed the brain colour in Photoshop and saved it and it automatically changed in the animation.

I chose to colour the brains as it is my favourite bit of my Printed Pictures and it is quite pivotal to Oliver Sacks' work.

Overall, I'm really happy i have changed the sting as it now hits the brief and it puts my mind at ease, and it didn't take much time.

Final Crit

Today we had our sat crit before the deadline, we looked at all the stings and looked and commented on everyones work. It was really nice to see what everyone had been doing over the last few months and the stings were really good.

The only thing that i am a bit confused with is that my animation isn't two colours. I told Ben and Teresa about this before the crit, as i was worried that it wasn't going to hit the brief. After reading in the brief again, it doesn't state that it has to be 2 colours but to check i asked their opinion. Ben said it was okay as how he understood it, the Printed Pictures brief asks for two colours, which i have done, and the animation just has to have elements of the Printed Pictures in it. But Teresa said that a paying customer might not be happy with it and maybe the best thing to do is to change it to two colours to play it safe.

Im pretty unsure how to change the colours in After Effects without having to recreate the whole animation again but i will have a look and if i can change it as i don't want to not hit the brief as thats a really important part of being an Illustrator.

Digital Print - Final Pieces

Today i finally printed out my final pieces for this project. I had scanned in my screen prints and touched them up and arranged them on InDesign to take them into the print room. I had to make a few decisions on the arrangement so it would be more cost effective; as the prints were just a bit longer than A1 paper, at first i though a continuous, banner-like roll would be best but then i thought that if i printed them all on 1 A0 print then i could just cut them out and i would only have to pay for 1 print. So that is what i did and it worked out really well. I had put crop marks on the page in In Design but they were the wrong way around so once printed i marked it out with pencil and used a scalpel and a ruler to cut them out.

I am really happy with the way they look, although the colours have come out a bit darker than i had wanted. The orange glasses now look red and the lighter green is now dark. but Overall, they look good and even more so now i can see them for the first time in the right format.

Animation

Oliver Sacks Sting from Alice Franklin on Vimeo.

After Effects

I finished my animation today and i am really pleased with it, I had taken time getting all of my elements together, the music, the drawings and i wrote out the text for it as well. Overall, i think it looks really good, you can definitely see that it goes with my prints as it has all the elements of my screen prints and the mono print. It also goes to the music, i took a lot of care making sure that the pieces of the animation went to the music after we had the storyboarding session with Fred, as he pointed out what a difference it would make, and i think it does!

I kept it simple, like i wanted too and I really enjoyed the experience of making it. I have felt confident with After Effects as i tried hard in the sessions to take good notes as technology doesn't come very easily to me. After i finished, i actually realised that i quite enjoyed making it and it would be something i would look forward to using again, if i get the opportunity.

Storyboard for My Animation

I have done some storyboarding for my animation, its very limited as i knew i wasted to use all of the elements from my printed pictures part of the brief. I have gone for the last storyboard as i have thought about the frame and music to go with it.

I have decided to use classical music for my Animation as Oliver Sacks really liked Classical music and his favourite is Bach.

Screen Printing

After hours in the print room, i have finally printed all of my prints for my final pieces. I am really happy with how they have came out, especially the mono printed brain. Although, it was testing at times, as at some points i had problems with bleeding, as the exposed images on the screen were too close to the brackets on the frame, so after a lot of trial and error, i worked out that if it was too close to the bracket, i just needed to turn the screen around.

Overall, i am really happy with my experience screen printing, i did find parts difficult at first as it was my first time screen printing independently as the only other time i have done it was in the induction. But i have definitely learnt how to do it now and will feel very confident next time i do it. 

Next time i would really like to screen print some more intricate drawings as i think they would look really great.

Negatives for Screen Print

Today i made my negatives ready for screen printing. I decided that i wanted each element the size of A4, so one print would be the length of 3xA4, when i drew them out and put them together it ended up being a few inches longer than A1, which would make it impossible to print them all in one go. Because of this i made A4 negatives of each element and will print them individually. This also meant that i wouldn't have paper big enough.

I spoke to my tutors about this problem and we came up with the idea that i would screen print each part on A4 and then put them together on InDesign and print them digitally. I was quite disheartened by this as i really like how Screen Printing looks and when we went to Colours May Vary, they were telling us how they love screen printing and prefer it over digitals. But after thinking on it, just as much work, if not more, will go in to mine as i haven't just digitally printed, I will have screen printed and mono printed as well. Overall, i am quite pleased that i will be using all the printing methods that were mentioned in this brief, although it will probably be a lot more costly now i have to print digitally, and on bigger paper. I will either have to print on a roll of paper or somehow fit them all on to A0, so I can save on money.

Monoprints

I went to the print room today and had a play about with different materials and did some resistance printing, using different objects and fabrics to create patterns and textures. I really enjoyed it and i ended up with some interesting prints. I also did some brain prints, using a comb and cardboard to take away the ink before inking, i think i got some quite interesting prints from it.

I am now thinking that i might use the mono printed brain instead of making a collage. Although i think the collage would look good, i think if i scan in the brain print and invert it so i can make it into a negative, then it would look really nice screen printed.

Its taken me a while to decide whether i wanted to screen print or to mono print, as i really like mono printing and only done screen printing in the induction. But I have chosen screen print as for my designs, which are quite graphic, i thought the clean lines and the effect that screen print gives, would look really good for my designs. And now, i can incorporate mono print as well.

Progress Tutorial

I had my crit with Pete today, he hasn't seen any of my work before so i sent some time describing Oliver Sacks and what i have down with my work so far. He did have a few good pointers about my work that he thought i should try out:

- He told me to have a play with mono printing and maybe make the brain out of the mono prints by making a collage of some sort. And play around with textures to do this.

- He also liked where i was going with this but i needed to make a few more plans, especially with the bottom prints.

- He told me that i needed to organise my work. My visual journal definitely needs rearranging as i have filled it now and have been working on loose sheets and slotting them in but its now getting tot he point where i can't find anything.

I definitely agree with what Pete said in the tutorial and i am going to go to the print room and have a play about to see if i can make any interesting textures and patterns.

Ideas for my final Pieces

After doing some development around where i was taking my work, I have no got my initial compositions down for my final pieces. I basically want to produce 3 long prints that will sit beside each other. I chose to do 3 long prints as i was keeping in mind that the brief specifies that we can use only 2 colours on the prints and as I have 3 different characters, i wanted to use different colours for each.

Each of the characters where drawn in a continuous line, which took a while to do correctly as i would always mis-calculate the proportions when i couldn't take my pen off the paper. 

The top part of each print will just be the outline of the character , the middle will be showing a brain in the middle and I'm still not sure about the bottom, although i am thinking of using the fire hydrant drawing and creating others for the other two.

Development

After talking with Ben, i got really excited about creating some new drawings, i had enjoyed doing the one line drawings earlier in the year so now I'm really excited to do some more for my final pieces.

I also like the concept behind it, as I'm not great at thinking anything other than literally so I quite like how the style of drawing represents the fragmented minds of some of Oliver Sacks' patients and you have to put the missing pieces together for yourself and work it out.

Although i have played about filling in the silhouettes, i so prefer the line drawings as you can see the journey of the lines a lot better.

Brain Storming

After the crit i had with the rest of the group, i didn't really know where to start with my work. I left it a few days and then started to do some drawings to do with Oliver Sacks that could give me inspiration for my final pieces.

I definitely want to create a set of prints, not a publication, but i just have to figure out the contents.

I had a word with Ben in class and told him about my struggles with my work and showed him what I have done so far. He really liked my one line drawing of the fire hydrant earlier on in the year and he said i was starting to be more conceptual with those drawings. He also liked the series of heads that i had drawn, based on the characters from the book and Oliver Sacks himself.

I liked the idea of the one line drawings being almost like Sacks' patients, how you have to fill in the missing pieces yourself and figure it out. The chat with Ben has given me a lot to think about and now can get on with some designs for my work.

Crit

In this crit we had to present the work we had so far to the rest of the group. It didn't go that well of me, which i was kind of expecting as i didn't really like the work i had so far either. The music notes were all a bit cliche and I definitely need to do more, as what i have so far, I'm not really pleased with.