Chapter Thirty One - End of Year Reflective Report

End of Year Reflective Report

Concrete experience

The Skills/knowledge I learnt this year was a better understanding of Cinema 4D, Adobe After Effects and Adobe Premiere Pro. I started to use plugins like Turbulence FD software for Cinema 4D and for the first time I have been using Indesign to create my portfolio book and using plugin within that up loaded on to blurb.co.uk to publish. I been building up my knowledge of cinema 4D with learning about metaball, motion tracker, simulations like hair and different lighting effects. I feel like I am getting better at understanding cinema 4d, slowly. 

Researching more into the creative industry side of life, looking at where I like to get next. Illustration, looking at publishers for children books and animation, looking at the skills I need to be a 3D model creator. I have been to pictoplasma and learnt a hell of a lot about the creative industry and trends, how to help market myself. I was very safe with my projects I chose to do in my modules, part of wish I was braver and a different story and worked on that one. But I worked to the best of my ability and gained more knowledge and ideas on how to improve myself. 

Volunteering for live tales probably the best thing did this year. Working on the workshops, creating illustration for the children books is really rewarding. 

Reflective Observations

It's been a bit hit or miss with my final works, something went well and others didn't. My personal projects didn't work out how I wanted because I want to animate my story and the story was more like a book and too long to animate so had to make some quick change which didn't work to well, so fault on that front but in the end creating a very good 2D hand drawn and coloured in Photoshop animation. I feel that could done with my final work and put more time into my final pieces to polish them up properly. I feel I always rush my end  product and I need to learn to slow down and work on doing the best I can in the time I have.  

My strengths for this year has been -

• My time management and keep to my deadline.
• Learning new skills, like cinema 4D and Adobe after effects and using new software, like Adobe Indesign.
• Organisation, keeping track of my work and keeping it all together. Plus keep all my written work  too update. 

My weaknesses for this year has been -

• My confidence in my work is low and in myself.
• I still have a lot to learn in animation if I want in the creative industry. 
• My confidence in doing presentation is really bad and hate to get up and talking in front of people.

My S.W.O.T goals (strengths, weakness, opportunities and treats) are to create my children books and send them to publishers to see if they want to publish them. Also to carry on working on my animation skills so I can get a job in animation. 

Abstract Conceptualization

Next year I will build a website to market itself on. I need to work on my knowledge of software and working on my illustration for my children books. I also would to build on the art books I have and this will help me gain new skills and techniques. I will continue to volunteer and find new workshops to volunteer for.

I'm interested in folklore and fairly tales so might try creating my own into a story and to work on different styles of drawing. My areas of weakness are a lack of knowledge and skills. I need to improve my drawing skills, always and work harder. Also to research different styles that would work in children Illustrations. I like to keep working on body shapes, proportions and anatomy. I must keep trying harder to improve my grammar and spelling. I'm going to build a website where everyone can see my work and may be sell my art. So over the summer holidays I going learn about website design and how create a good website to set myself up well for the next year. Oh and the most important thing is to relax as much as I can over the summer holidays because I wore myself out this years and my work suffered because of that so I realized the important of rest and getting my energy back. 

Active Experimentation

This is where a write my targets to complete over the summer holidays before returning for the third year. Looking back over targets from last year I wanted to create a 3D model in Cinema 4D, I only got at far in creating a head that has the rules of topology, will continue with this and work on the hopefully.  I like to build on top of what I was doing last summer, with creating story board and working my children books Illustration. Plus keep working on my writing, spelling and vocabulary. I bought myself a watercolour set so I hope to practice my painting skills and I have wooden panels to paint on, so loads to do over the summer holidays. 

This year I mine challenge myself to try ink October this year and keep doodling so I'm already for when Live tales start up properly in September. The most important thing is to relax and have fun.