Summery of current priorities

Back at uni now after having been away for two weeks. Over that time I have spent alot of time working on an animation for SNS/SLN, and have been working on my dissertation. I also taught myself how to send an invoice and have been doing research into career paths and possible future employment.

My commitments for this final semester are university are:

- Completion of the client proposal project (evaluating my research)
- Finishing the dissertation and getting it bound
- Referencing and evaluating all my research for the dissertation
- The exam project
- Doing work experience with Wired Sussex (one day a week throughout April)
- Continuing to do work for Student Network Sussex
- Going to a college in Lancing to give a talk about my experience of Foundation Degrees with Aim Higher Sussex
- Going to Lewes College to take photographs of a foundation degree conference with Sussex Learning Network
- Re-doing / updating my online portfolio website
- Updating my CV and beginning to apply for work for after graduation

Easter Break Update

Have been working every day of the reak so far. I got the D & A D parcel sent off, though I made some alterations first to improve the print quality. Since then I have been working on the animated information screen I proposed to my client for the client proposal project, which will be used in schools and colleges at career events being held by SNS/SLN later this year. I have also nearly finished the dissertation. I need to add a little bit here and there, and format it properly with creditied quotes, and write the conclusion, which will be about 800 words, as I have written 6000 so far, and I need 200 for loose ends within the essay. I will look into places to print and bind it over the break. Also, I taught myself to and wrote my first ever invoice, and have been doing alot of careers research as part of the client proposal project, so, very busy, despite it being the Easter break.

By the way, if anyone is interested in exchanging dissertations with me to proof read and get a fresh perspective on each others work please let me know.

Creative Catapult Review

This was a wonderful experience. I'm really glad I signed up for it.

To re-cap, it was set up by Wired Sussex in conjunction with Kanoti, and held at the Lighthouse. Briefs were given by the BBC in January, and we, the attendees (students and graduates interested in aniation and illustration) were divided into four groups of four and given two months to work toegther on a pitch for the BBC.

Yesterday we had the final workshop, in which we all pitched to the BBC, and then given an evening seminar aimed to guide us in building confidence and start building our careers, whether or not we knew what we wanted to do.

The experience of working in a team and pitching to the BBC was not only a rewarding one, but an enjoyable one, and it was great to meet such a diverse range of professional practitioners and other students and graduates.

I left the event feeling truely inspired, enabled and empowered, and am very glad to have attended.

Status report

Am confident about meeting the deadline. Have finsihed animation but still need to mount boards and tie up loose ends with my sketchbook and workbook. Have been very busy this past week balancing the project with the client proposal, and tomorrow am attending workshop two of Creative Catapult, so have not been ablt to blog as much as I would have liked. Will update more soon!

Boards and final preparations

So, to update, I have finished my animation, but am having trouble exporting sound. It shouldn't be too hard to fix this, it's a problem I have had many times. I usually get around it by exporting the visual, and then matching it with the sound in i-movie. It is a nusiance though. I think it's a technical fault with the program, as my version of After Effects is rather old.

As for boards, I have nearly finished laying them out digitally (there are three), and will print them at the start of next week, to carefully mount and package. I'm not too worried about mounting as I have done it hundreds of times on previous courses, and will be using ready cut board so it won't take more than a quarter of an hour at most, packaging will be fine, although I am concerned over the sending of the package, as I have been warned it will be costly.

Regarding this, I will package the foam board between to rigid sheets of firmer cardboard, to protect them, make sure the CD is in a hardcase rather than a softslip, and then wrap all in bubble wrap, then brown paper, all tied up with string.

I aim to get this finished by the Thursday, as I am keeping next Friday free to meet with my client over client proposal, and I have a monumentus amount of work I need to get done for her over the next couple of weeks, alongside the client proposal, which is for a differet piece of work, that I will be working on later in the Spring.

My dissertation has not developed much beyond more research, as I am waiting to hear back from John who is reading over my draft.