Spring Term: The Beginning
The start of the Spring Term has been almost as I had hoped it would be. Something that I really hoped for on return was a bit more pace; I felt the first term was very slow and it was starting to drag in the last few weeks. This new term has been a bit more explosive, with it being less about the basics and actually getting on with some projects. Hooray!
The content of our Spring Term currently looks like this:
- Monday – History and Theory
- Tuesday – 3D Modeling and Texturing Environments
- Wednesday – After Effects ‘Workshop’
- Thursday – Design for Animation (Background Designs)
- Friday – Self Directed
The Wednesday Lessons
This is going to sound like a rant, possibly because it is. The first Wednesday back, we were ready to start the Adobe After Effects workshops. We arrived on the Wednesday morning expecting a morning session (as timetabled), only to find out we were now to be in all day each Wednesday. Ok, messed up my plans for that afternoon, but I worked around it – I’m happy to be in, if we are being taught. The problem is that we weren’t taught at all in the afternoon – we were simply given a pre-recorded tutorial I could of accessed from the Internet with a million other superior ones. Still, I hung around to complete it and did learn some basics about After Effects.
[Edit] – Since I started this post, another lesson has been taught in After Effects. It was another bloody video tutorial. The promised green screen introduction was already booked out or something.
Live at 5
I thought they were having a laugh when they told us about the “Live at 5” project. Essentially it came down to this; create all the effects work for a live news show run by another course on campus. That includes a 30 second intro, logo, astons, weather animations, football results tables, etc using After Effects. We were put into 4 groups of 8 and only given the week to complete it, using complex software almost nobody had used before. The best one of the 4 would be used.
[Edit] – It wasn’t ours.
We were shown the previous years work (which Live at 5 has been using since) and at the time we had to snigger (no offense). Having completed the project now ourselves, we appreciate how unrealistic the time frame was to get anything special out of it. It seems daft to give such a small time frame to complete it, especially with no prior experience in After Effects, working as a team or a production line. No way was the outcome going to be satisfactory, particularly for ourselves. I won’t be putting it in my portfolio, that is for sure.
[Edit] – Since doing it I have come to the conclusion we were probably being tested under pressure, seeing how we would interact under the circumstances.
Something that I noticed about the previous years work is that regardless of how good the intro was, each one was let down by a horrifying logo. Something that became very clear is that animators are not graphic designers and definitely should not pretend to be. I did try and take on the task of doing ours, but it wasn’t pretty – an over night logo isn’t really enough. We ended up doing the whole project in a day (the only whole day we could all attend – the last day). Here is an initial idea for the logo, though didn’t get as far as font / colour. We just needed something / anything.
Next time, within our groups, setting up a production line of some sort and assigning tasks will be essential. I think a lot of talent went unused because we didn’t organise ourselves very well this time (not that we knew how to organise it). In the end it was good to see who in the groups could be relied on in future projects. Jonnie, if you are reading this, it won’t be you.
No matter how much I’d love to show you what we did, I don’t possess any final material relevant to it. Just picture this – it was AMAZING.
[Edit] – I have added to this post on different occasions, so I apologise if it is a bit fragmented.
Roy
July 8th, 2009 at 6:40 pm
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