ProPractice 2nd Group meet up

26 Feb 2014
2nd group meet up with the gang, we decided the theme of our exhibition show --- Lights.
The idea generates from light pollution, then talking about starts and milky way, then about little light-up houses, woods, papers, economy affection.

What does it have to relate to future canvas?
We see it economically . we see how the economic will change through the power and help from design/future design.

After the discussion and suggestions, every group member agreed, so we started to brain storm ideas about lights , we set up a group on Facebook,makes us easier to discuss right the night we got home, posting researches and ideas to share on the Facebook page.

I did some random sketches on the spot when we started talking about the lights and everyone's getting a little excited about it.

After the discussion, we all went home and each posted some stuffs on our Facebook group to share some more ideas:

Bethan shared her blog to the group page to let us know roughly what she did.
http://bethwegillustration.blogspot.co.uk/

Emma shares her inspirational blog to us to develop further ideas.
http://littleetee.tumblr.com/
http://uk.heijmans.nl/Roosegaarde-%20Van_Gogh_Bicycle_Path#.U2sdI_mSwrX

Alex shared this shadow-like-lamp and an igloo made out of books.

Georgina shared some examples of lights.

Some other ideas

We continuously doing research for a few nights for the idea , sharing blog posts and stuffs constantly.Im happy that we are working as a flow, pretty good. Also, we keep contact, the only thing is Bethan is hard to contact ,she is always away to Cardiff so happen at the time we are having a group meet up*

Animation: Developing Character

Today's talk by Mary is kind of like a day she pushes the animation option students to give us a talk and ask us about the progression about our animation project, everyone /most of the people have the same reason why non of us start to step into the next step to do our animation film.

Mary said people who do under camera MUST book 2/1 week earlier with her to discuss/ask for help for their project.

I think is due to her was a student here before thats why she know what we think, she knows that part of us is slacking, lazy and dont have the courage to move forward and start our animation project, because some of us never done animation before, that's why they stunt at the same state.

Mary's advice : courage ! make a shitty work! you have to know what you did wrong only you can do things right ! totally motivative to everyone !

I find this an inspiring day so I noted it down in my blog.

LIbrary Hunt: Visual Culture, Essay Writing

This post is extra update, through out the research for my visual culture essay writing, I found very much inspiring true stories from people around the world.
Because Im going to be writing an essay topic about transgender, they are not popular and often make people get the wrong idea, after my research i found the inner part of their personal stories , truly inspiring.
went to library to borrow some books and dvds.
I enjoy writing the essay, my knowledge grown a huge part about transgender and people in LGBTQ.

Frasier MacLean Talk

A famous author who wrote Setting the Scene: The Art and Evolution of the Animation Layout, and credits included from the movies: Space Jam, Tarzan and so on came to Bower Ashton to give a 2 hours and 30 minutes talk to share his experience through out the year on how he worked on his projects.

He talks about how important it is of the layout of an animation  because that brings out the whole idea of and picture of the animation. He also talks about how he discovered that people did not actually treat animation layout seriously in the animation film. He showed us some film included The thief and cobbler
Studios mentioned are Animo , D-Canvas etc.

He emphasizes that the staging and movement of an animation is rather important , and it is also important to develop your own animation style.

Some example of books he recommended.

Frasier MacLean with students after the talk show. Seems like everyone was amazed by what he did.

Some notes I wrote during the talk.

ProPractice 1st Group meet up

Due to some issues on the first time we grouped up, our 2 split groups decides to officially split into 2 separate groups to work with, and now I am in the group with Emma, Georgina, Bethan and Alex.

This is our first official meet up to socialize for a bit. We had pizza and talk about the project, brain-storming ideas on what we should do for the project. Too bad Bethan couldn't make it because she was sick.

The first meet up takes place in Emma's house.

ProPractice Exhibition

I just found out that propractice launched another task for us, is to do an exhibition show in this coming May, a Future Canvas themed exhibition. We are asked to performed in a professional way, learning to deal with people and work as a team, we also need to invite visitors from outside of Uni such as guest artist, to come and view our work.

The team/idea for this exhibition show is to allow everyone to touch and have a fun fill with all the artworks. We have to have a collective, and allow people to touch our artworks ( because it gets annoying when you go to museum/gallery and cant able to touch any artwork.), create an invite list of local guest artist, the exhibition needs to be publicity.

Well, this will be a fun project to work with.

Traditional/ 2D Animation Pipeline

An animation workshop with Mary Murphy and Ian Friend from animation module.
The first session with Mary I learned about traditional hand drawn 2D animaiton : lightbox, peg bar, pencil, eraser , etc. Like for example we each draw a simple picture and then combine our picture together by blending the images together and you'll see the animation flowing.

As for 2D digital animation I learned from Ian Friend, using the software adobe flash
doing a butterfly testing with easy techniques to create a movement form.

It was fun.

** will upload the videos soon.

Arduino Workshop

First day in fabrication studio doing my first arduino workshop, playing with electric and conductor.
The tutor who showed us/runs the workshop is James and Chris from fabrication tech center, they are nice people.

We discovered about lights LEDs, and battery, we also played with sensors such as moving sensor, timer that will react to the arduino system/program.

It was an interesting workshop, I figured it might work in our project for pro practice.

Animation Workshop: Audio & Clay Animation

31 Jan 2014
I joined the option module to do Animation in my second semester , the first animation workshop I attended is with Mary Murphy, a professional clay making artist and also one of the stop motion tutor in the animation course.

I learned about stop motion animation, clay making, the importance of audio to an animation.
Afternoon we get to team up into 2 person and work on an animation with a chosen audio file. I teamed up with Laura Dickson and we made a short animation video.

It didnt came out that good, but Im glad I tried it out. It was a fun experience.

3 Feb 2014
Second animation workshop with Mary Murphy.
On this day, she is talking about stop motion, camera, rules of working under camera, importance of time managements and learning about the flow of clay animation. Which means there cannot be a mistake when you are doing stop motion, because once you did something wrong in one frame, you have to start all over again.

Throwback : Manifesto , Future Canvas

17 Jan 2014
Everyone are asked to do a research about Future Canvas, as in how do you see the future of Illustration can be, and how do you see your future self to be.
What is your future canvas? Who you are, what you are. Explore self reflection/reflective approach. As an artist, you have to know what you are doing and why you are doing this. What are your potential canvas? Can your future proof your work ?

Your future, Your responsibilities .
Develop your own working methods.

23 Jan 2014
Whole day workshop.
A task for us to discuss about all the famous tag lines and quotes by all kinds of famous artist or it can also be random artist/person that inspires us to think about our future self.

I bought a magazine call "computer arts" , basically its like a magazine for artist to speak out, so I read through some pages and came up with the above ideas, and also some web researches.

After that we are asked to form a group to discuss about future canvas, collective manifesto, something to do with believe in yourself and find a way to make it work. It also gives us a chance ot learning to work together as a team/group.

I manage to team up with Bethan, Georgie, Alex, Elena , Timna, Tabitha, Frejya, Emma. Because out group formed up kind of big, so we all decided to split into 2 little smaller groups to start off with our discussion.