1. What skills have you developed through this project and how effectively do you think you have applied them?
Teamwork
There were five of us working in this project, me, Daisy, Sarah G, Sarah H and Mel H. This is definitely a skill I developed, mainly because we were constantly communicating, having crits and meetings, and discussing our ideas and work together. This was really important because we were very enthusiastic about the project and wanted to make it work, so this was a necessary part of the process. We had a Facebook group were we could keep updating each other and met up lots of times in person at uni. I think this contributed to the success of our project because we were always informed and could build on our ideas and decisions.
I think sometimes I can be nervous when working in groups as I'll worry about people's capabilities or reliability, but since we picked this group ourselves I trusted everyone to do the work when we set it and to a high standard. I was happy that everyone got to do design work and we shared the load which I think can be quite hard to do, but we managed to do that.
Animation
I became quicker at animating, since I did two in a day and I was confident that I could get it finished to the standard that we wanted. We also decided that our presentation should be a video, and I was able to do that as well which isn't something that I have done before.
Presenting
I feel I have improved on my presentation skills, as I always get so nervous. I was particularly nervous for this presentation due to doing it in front of professionals and the fact I was in charge of playing and stopping the video. However, it went smoothly, and not I, nor anyone else, messed up at all throughout it.
2. What approaches to/methods of design production have you developed and how have they informed your design development process?
Crits
We met up a lot to discuss concept and decision decisions, and this definitely helped to inform my development process. As I would usually do all of this myself, it was good to take a collaborative approach to it and work with other people's thoughts. For example, we decided that we liked Sarah G's illustrative style, and I knew I could adapt my style to work to that which was interesting. Then when it came to colour, I was able to pick some out that people liked, and then Daisy adapted those, and it was very much a collaborative approach that I enjoyed and was comfortable with.
After Effects
I have only used After Effects a few times, and it is fun to keep learning and producing animations which I enjoyed during this project. I made three, and it didn't take up too much time which it would have done at the beginning of the year. Since I did the two animated posters first and did those quite quickly, it gave me the confidence to be able to do the presentation as a video too which I wouldn't have usually done.
3. What strengths can you identify in your work and how have/will you capitalise on these?
Animation
This was definitely a strength as I was able to do the animations quickly and stick to our schedule for the workload.
Way of Working
I feel this was important to this project, because it really was a tough one. We spent a lot of time on the ideas stage, and started designing later than everybody else. By the time the first crit came with the people who were judging it, we had no designs and just ideas. They said we were going at it from a marketing/copy point of view, but really liked the idea. We were confident that working on the idea for a longer period of time was crucial, since we wanted to get that Big Idea and impress them. We knew we could design quicker, so wasn't worried about that.
We also had a lot of communication with each other which I think was really important and helped us to create something we were proud of because everybody was involved in the decision making progress and kept up to date.
We also all shared the design load - this isn't something that every group did, but we wanted the workload to be equal. So we all did a poster idea and design each, and then spread the work accordingly. I think this was the best approach so we all felt like we had contributed to how the brand looked.
4. What weaknesses can you identify in your work and how will you address these in the future?
Stress
Something I am guilty of is getting stressed! I know there are points throughout the project when I would get stressed, like when it took us quite long to think of an idea at first, or when I was worried the animations might look pixelated on screen or the presentation would mess up since it was a video. But, it all worked out in the end, and I just need to remember that there are ways to get around every problem.
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