JACK HOLLANDS STUDIO PRACTICE 2A: METHODS & MADNESS UNIT EGRD 2009

Shooting StarsWith wide media coverage, and just about everybody talking about the riots on social networkds as they went on in London. It didn’t take long before large congregations of law obiding citeezens were lined up ready to clean up the mess from looters and rioters.

This is what stood out most to me about Londons true colours in this moment of Londons history.

Images taken from the BBC website

Image from riotcleanup.com

The lasting impression I had about the London riots, is that they were over as quickly as they had started...

Biography - Stan BrakhageReceiving a name of someone I knew nothing about was an interesting start for me. After quickly finding out he was a film maker I immediately watched some examples of his work.

They were very abstract and intruiging, I wanted to know more about the man behind these pieces.

I thought the best way to get to know what was inteded by the work would be to go straight to the source. Unfortunately Brakhage had passed away from cancer sever years ago.

After winning an earlier battle with cancer, it appears Brakhage wanted to blog his own musings and thoughts in video.

The next best thing was to watch the in-depth interviews about himself.

These videos are the totality of my knowledge on him...

Being inspired by his work and his words, I set about experimenting in similar ways to him.

There was one quote where I felt Brakhage summed himself and all of his work up perfectly in one long sentence. I used this as the basis of communicating who he was to my audience.

Paper Co - Brief Encounters

Looking at the Henderson logo repeated really engrains it in memory. This may improve brand awareness of the company for whoever looks long enough through the scope.

Relating main images from the corporate website will bridge a gap between the virtual and real world of Henderson branding.

Seeing your own eye by also having a mirror at the end of the scope creates the unexpected for the viewer. There is also possibilities to use phrases such as “seeing the bigger picture requires more than one set of eyes” as witty copy on the exteria.

The thought process behind the direct mail piece for Henderson investors was all based on the idea of transformation.

I chose to make a kaleidoscope as an interactive direct mail piece. All materials were from paper as the brief indicated.

Feedback from the company and peers was overall positive.

There were two layers to the piece. The inside, what the user would see, and the outside animation. The outside animation is activated when someone uses the kaleidoscope and twists the tube.

The images we preffered seeing ourselves were images that most strongly represented the stock market to us, the facts and figures. The endless streems of numbers on the monitors, infinite possibilities, calculations and equations.

Simple animations can be made, usually no more than 6 frames long, due to the nature of the design process. This image is all the frames on the underlay of the tube.

This is the overlay to the animation. This blocks out all of the other frames as one image is shown.

The very nature of twisting the outside tube of a kaleidoscope makes it a perfect candidate for this animation type. This isn’t a very common sight due to technical limitations. In this instance it will create dramatic impact and be novel for the users.

Other users watching somebody look through the scope will see an animation as they twist the outside sleeve around. This may spark conversation up between the two people and gain further interest into what the package is and who its from etc. If ther eis no one else to notice the scanimation as the user is interacting with the piece, the user should find it themselves through curiosity.

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This semester studio practice started off very slowly, with briefs few and far between. It seemed as though towards the end of the semester we were flooded with around 6 different big tasks to do at once. I found this rather difficult and even missed the Chinese whispers brief because of it.

There has been a lot to adjust to this semester. At the end of the summer I moved out of my family home for the first time, this has been a rather testing period for myself. I also got diagnosed as moderately dyslexic at the beginning of the summer. This has taken time and focus away from studies as I am still learning more about what this means in terms of education and new ways of approaching learning. I also sadly withdrew a successful application to study internationally at Kwanthlen University in Canada due to financial difficulties.

I have tried my best to juggle everything but I feel time management has let some areas down this semester. Having tuition on time management has helped improve these areas, hopefully next semester I will be more organised and find more time to be more active on the blog.

Using the blog has been a difficult area for myself. It takes me a great deal of time to upload things and organise my work online and on the computer. It has been getting easier as I adjust to the new methods and ways of working. Next semester I will be more pro active and have more of my processes uploaded.

The briefs set have been engaging and I have been able to develop areas of communication I hadn’t explored much before. For example, this semester I have made several moving image outcomes. This is the first time I’ve used video editing software to full extent, I would feel confident in making further moving image pieces to communicate ideas to an audience.

Studio Practice Evaluation

Bibliographyhttp://www.riotcleanup.com/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1P4LkyWyHfM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQksa-KSV4Y

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-14456857

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14436499

http://eyethinkinc.com/