Reflection!

Reflecting upon the week of Induction:

I found the process of meeting new people and sharing with them extremely refreshing. It was rewarding to find out that most of the group shares the same ethical beliefs as my self yet this is expressed through a design pathway rather than an academic path.

The walk around London was so inspiring and really made me start to analysis the city in its different environments, incorporating the filming into this gave me a tool to express the different angles of discovery and also ensured my confidence with in the groups ability to work as an effective team. Post Production: working within the team demonstrated to me the different talents people have and how the use of networking will be extremely useful for the future. What’s New: Progress Report: The main aim for this project is to learn in areas which I have feel I have little understanding of whether that be technically or in the form of knowledge.

After considering my project I decided to look at a number of areas these were interactive design and the virtual studio. From the selection process it seemed I was mostly working with Yung Kim and Cloudia Vardon. On the 5/10/08 I travailed to London to meet Yung to try and research the meaning of interaction and to establish how this research could deepen my understanding. We decided to describe the different elements of interaction you find within the media industry and follow this through with demonstrating presented by Youtube.

Through talking with Shane I suggested that everyone should add his or her contributions to the what’s new blog. On reflections I thought this was a good idea as some people would be unable to be in college at the same time therefore the blog provided a meeting place where work could be viewed and ideas generated. I felt the meeting with Yung went really well and I was starting to view the blog establishing new ideas through old ones.

Around the same time frame I also met up with Cloudia to work in the Virtual studio, this experience was rewarding as I learnt the benefits and functions of the technology.

On the 8/10/08 Yung and I presented our ideas to James Uren using the blog as an aid. The blog was extremely useful for the group when presenting ideas as everything was in one place.

By the 15/10/08 I was feeling a little dismayed as the meeting on the 8th had left me with feeling of being lost and having no function within the group adding to this Yung had decided to change groups with out informing me, so while questions myself as to what would be the best move forward I decided to make connections with MJ as he had presented new ideas relating to mobile interaction.

At first the language barrier was difficult to get around and I feel that MJ lacked confidence but as we worked together the ideas seemed to come together this left me feeling happier and I felt as though I was making some progress.

Both I and MJ have met considerably to work through our ideas, I suggested to MJ that we first wrote the ideas down as on the first day we had come up with about seven ideas. While developing these ideas I continually made a point about considering the three area the group had decided to look at these being 3D Head tracking, 3D Modelling, and 3D Motion Caption.

The idea behind this was to make sure our ideas were relevant to the content through doing this I noticed that a lot of the ideas crossed over into all three areas to compliment each other. Working with MJ gave me confidence to think the ideas I was suggesting to him were realistic one's that could be generally considered for the website. Regardless of the language barrier I think both I and MJ worked well together as MJ had the technical skills and we both brought ideas which complimented each other.

After bring the ideas together both I and MJ discussed how the ideas would be presented on the website we first acknowledge the graphic and website department to think about using a template after doing this both I and MJ collected the relevant graphics ready for use in Adobe Photo Shop CS3, we worked together to sketch out layouts.

After doing this MJ worked on Adobe Photo Shop to present the ideas. Adding to this I had written out promotional content to be displayed on the graphics however it was decided that Annie would rewrite the content so that the text would fit within the promotional context. Once complete I then gave the relevant files to the website department.

Due to an illness I was asked to conduct an interview at Green Park with Ruth Howcroft from Lectra. The interview was based around research conducted by Cloudia concerning the usability of Modaris footage. I found the experience really rewarding as for the first time I felt professional, Ruth Howcroft appeared to be nervous so using the skills I know I was able to make her feel more relaxed before appearing on camera.

Back at the post production department Alex loaded and edited the entire footage loading in an animated video which we were able to acquire from Ruth Howcroft.

On reflection this project has given me the opportunity to view myself in a group environment and if I was to be given the chose I would chose to work in groups again as I feel the environment generate motivation to get task done and while discussing new ideas another team member may be able to suggest a new concept from the original idea making learning a more rewarding experience.

Reflection upon Group Presentation

Presenting our ideas to James Uren, My main concern was I got across the process of our (MJ and I ) learning in a logical way, MJ was nervous so it was decided that he would present with me through doing this MJ became more confident I was pleasantly surprised by MJ comments and felt the presentation went well.