First of all I will just mention the web design side of the course which I am in the process of finishing. Its the first time I have used Dreamweaver and used HTML and CSS to build a web site. The main things I have learnt are how organised you need to be to make sure it builds up in a very logical progression and very methodical. Luckily I am a very organised person (sometimes to organised!).

Its important to save all your images with lowercase and no gaps in the first instance to save massive amounts of time later on changing them all! Its also important to remember to save all the images as either .jpg / gif / png24 and in WEB FORMAT.

Perhaps the most important aspect of all is to make mock ups of all your design pages before you start the design. I did this in Photoshop and I think it saved me massive amounts of time later on.

The fact that we designed in code rather than physically meant trying to visualise the design as you go along, its much easier to have a mock up in front of you for reference.

Reflections on the whole course; I have very much enjoyed the whole course and its been very useful for me to learn totally new softwares such as Premier Pro and Dreamweaver and it would be nice in the future if they were incorporated into the work I do for the North Wales Fire and Rescue Service.

The only reservations I personally have on the course is that I would have prefered to have had much more time to properly learn these two previously mentioned softwares properly. I found especially with the Dreamweaver that I felt unable to work on my own and constantly needed Liz’sa support because I didn’t know how to create a lot of the code to produce the web design I has drafted in mock ups. This is a personal preference but I would have prefered to have spent less time at the beginning of the course on developing creativity and more time learning the softwares. But I can understand why this time is useful to other students who perhaps have not spend much time being creative and building their confidence in this area.

I would just like to take this opportunity to thank Liz for all her help and support on the course and I have learnt a lot and been enthused by it all.

I would just like to mention the fact that I visited THE ARTS COLLEGE one day last week to see the students work and I was incredibly impressed by the work the BA Illustration Students had done, it was really professional and I would love to have half of their talent!

I am also having to get used to thinking in pixel size which I have never done before and find this awkward and time consuming often having to resave images again at the right size. This must sound really negative ….but its only because I am really keen to learn to create a web pages using only HTML and CSS.

Anyway, enough moaning….here are a few jpg’s of my individual web page Photoshop layouts.

I am looking forward to learning how to intergrate all the other Adobe softwares we have been learning into web design such as illustrator graphics and photoshop image manipulations. So that all these softwares can be utilised together to enhancea piece of design.

this week I have had a practice with web design and also looked at the ZENGARDEN website to get some ideas about the type of creative design you could use, which has been very useful.

I have also been thinking about layout for the 4 web pages we have to do for the assignment, and been thinking about graphics I could use for each section, such as a film roll for the photography page together with shutter appertures and viewfinders which I have produced in ILLUSTRATOR and Photoshop. Clapper boards, studio lights and shutter apperture graphics for the Video page which I have again produced using Illustrator and Photoshop to create. I still find it hard to imagine that using CSS code you can create the design that can be so precise.

Today Marianne, Caroline and I finished our 20 second video. It’s been a really enjoyable experience and the mistakes we made have taught us a lot about how we would approach the project next time around. I think for one I would think more carefully about the storyboard, and even roughly time out each frame to fit the 20 seconds. I would also look carefully at each frame and see if they progressed the action along, were they necessary to move forward the action? Did we need different camera shots?

Liz gave us some photocoipies of the work of graphic novelist SCOTT McCLOUD which had a lot of great tips on storyboarding, which I would definately look at again for ideas.

Just visited site – the audio isn’t quite right? but the film is ok.

It film was based on a poem and it reminded my a bit of ‘to kill a mocking bird’ only with a grittier feel and more underlying subversive message and emotion – leaving a carefree childhood for the worries and responsibility of adulthood.

Here is the poem which was the audio for the animation throughout.

when we were kids

there was a strange

house

all the shades were

always

drawn

and we never heard

voices

in there

and the yard was full of

bamboo

and we liked to play in

the bamboo

pretend we were

Tarzan

(although there was no

Jane).

and there was a

fish pond

a large one

full of the

fattest goldfish

you ever saw

and they were

tame.

they came to the

surface of the water

and took pieces of

bread

from our hands.

our parents had

told us:

“never go near that

house.”

so, of course,

we went.

we wondered if anybody

lived there.

weeks went by and we

never saw

anybody.

then one day

we heard

a voice

from the house

“YOU GOD DAMNED

WHORE!”

it was a man’s

voice.

then the screen

door

of the house was

flung open

and the man

walked

out.

he was holding a

fifth of whiskey

in his right

hand.

he was about

30.

he had a cigar

in his

mouth,

needed a

shave.

his hair was

wild and

uncombed

and he was

barefoot

in undershirt

and pants.

but his eyes

were

bright.

they blazed

with brightness

and he said,

“hey little

gentlemen,

having a good

time, I

hope?”

then he gave a

little laugh

and walked

back into the

house.

we left,

went back to my

parent’s yard

and thought

about it.

our parents,

we decided

had wanted us

to stay away

from there

because they

never wanted us

to see a man

like

that,

a strong natural

man

with

beautiful

eyes.

our parents

were ashamed

that they were

not

like that

man,

that’s why they

wanted us

to stay

away.

but

we went back

to that house

and the bamboo

and the tame

goldfish.

we went back

many times

for many

weeks

but we never

saw

or heard

the man

again.

the shades were

down

as always

and it was

quiet.

then one day

as we came back from

school

we saw the

house.

it had burned

down,

there was nothing

left,

just a smoldering

twisted black

foundation

and we went to

the fish pond

and there was

no water

in it

and the fat

orange goldfish

were dead

there,

drying out.

we went back to

my parents’ yard

and talked about

it

and decided that

our parents had

burned their

house down,

had killed

them

had killed the

goldfish

because it was

all too

beautiful,

even the bamboo

forest had

burned.

they had been

afraid of

the man with the

beautiful

eyes.

and

we were afraid

then

that

all through our lives

things like that

would

happen,

that nobody

wanted

anybody

to be

strong and

beautiful

like that,

that

others would never

allow it,

and that

many people

would have to

die.

Below – some clips from the film

This is an example produced in photoshop of the kind of keyhole shot – I discussed earlier

Initially we looked at a few small clips from films for ideas, and this was a great help in formulating the storyboard later on.

We began by thinking of ideas for the theme of ‘ someone goes through a door’ – this was done by using problem solving techniques such as brain storming to generate lots of diverse ideas. We then moved onto storyboarding a few 20 second films in small frames almost. I really enjoyed drawing the ideas out into paper and thinking about different shots.

We had to include at least 3 shots… a close up, mid shot and long shot within the time frame.

Once we had decided on which film to work on, we then got down to staging the set in an area of the building to shoot the film.

It took me a bit of time to get to grips with the video camera having not used one before, the most difficult things I found to do were to change the lever from video record to playback I found this really fiddly, and to zoom in and out without staggering the film, so that it was a fluid movement took a bit of practice too.

We all collaborated on the choice of shot and did several with more than one shot which we decided could be edited later depending on which worked best. We even made some materials to use in the film such as a keyhole shape to make it look like an eye was peering through the keyhole. This worked really well. Another area which worked well was creating a blur on the film, we managed to work this out by taking the camera off automatic focus and putting it on manual focus so that we could control the blur to make it look like the protagonist was shortsighted which was intergal to the story line.

We also had to improvise quite a bit to achieve the look we wanted. One difficult long shot was based on getting a good view of a sign before the door shut. This was quite tricky to film before the sign dissapeared behind the door. We had a few trial goes which didn’t work that well before we had to rope in Liz to physically hold back the door at the bottom (out of shot) and then let it go once we had got the shot!

Next week we will be editing the film to fit it into its 20 second timeslot. Watch this space!!

I have tried to glean research information from a variety of sources from the internet, books and magazines. I have made an effort on the internet to look for a wide variety of information from interviews with Jonathan Barnbrook as well as reviews of others to his work and exhibitions. The main books I have looked at were both ordered from NEWI Library as they didn’t have either in stock, it was very good of them and the fact they got them so quickly.  I also had a brief look around the reference library on Monday evening, and to my suprise found some additional information relating to a talk he gave in America in 2003(graphics2003) which was very interesting and which I photocopied. I was disappointed that they didn’t have any Adbusters magazines there though.

See you this Friday in Rhyl, It seems ages since we last all met up!

I would have really liked to have been able to buy one of Johathan Barnbrooks type fonts probably MASON which I really like to use in the PowerPoint. However they are too expensive so I have resorted to using two fonts sans serif fonts Arial and Gill Sans.

I have also had some luck with a book I wanted in the NEWI library , as the last one hadn’t been returned the librarians had managed to order a new one for me which I will pick up next week sometime one evening.

I have also contacted Adbusters magazine to see if they can advise me of getting a backcopy, still waiting for a reply.

Tomorrow, going to do some more work on the PowerPoint presentation.