Essay Session - Thursday 6th April

This was the final session to get any feedback on the essay before its final submission. Previous to the lesson I completed the essay so as much of it could be marked as possible. The general feedback that I received was about concluding points in more detail and to rework the conclusion slightly so that it directly answers the question. Other than this the rest of the essay was deemed to be up to a reasonable level.

Animation seminar - Monday 3rd April

Continuing from the theme of drawing and animation in the lecture we then had to put this into practise and make a simple hand drawn flip book that we could then flick through to make it look like there was movement. With a lot of pages to complete and trying to get movement into the piece, I kept the actual drawing very simple with a stickman attempting to do keepy uppies with a football.The end result isn't as great as I would like in terms smoothness of the animation, this is due to the thickness of the flick book making it hard to skip through the pages quick enough to provide the feeling of movement but also without missing pages out.

Flipbook Animation from Ben Bowden on Vimeo.

After this seminar I then went onto digitalise this piece of work using Adobe After Effects and Illustrator. I drew my character and the ball in Illustrator before importing them as individual layers into After Effects. I tried to copy the movements created by the flip book as closely as possible and the end product is shown below.

flipbook vimeo from Ben Bowden on Vimeo.

Drawing and Motion Graphics - Monday 3rd April

This lecture was Sara showing us a series of short animations which she took inspiration from in some way. It was interesting to see how people's tastes and styles vary as a lot of the examples shown were had a very distinctive hand drawn, rugged feel about them. Personally I feel as if design is better when it looks cleaner and more finished however I can understand what people see in the hand made look. One example shown that I did like was Procrastination by Johnny Kelly as I felt as if it was very cleverly made. The narrator and the film as a whole was taking a long time to get to the point then kept ending and start again at the credits much like the process of procrastination itself.

Procrastination from Johnny Kelly on Vimeo.

Imitation - Monday 27th March

This seminar was about of task in which you had to find some way to document a word that you had chosen off of a list given to us, whilst exploring its meaning further. The idea that we came up with for our piece of work is a paired activity in which one participant draws the word, then the second person attempts to copy or imitate the first person attempt. Due to the inaccuracy of free hand methods this produces an imitation of the original as they are similar but will not be identical.

Iconography and Authenticity - Monday 27th March

Iconography is made up of the Greek words for image and to write. It is the identification and description of the content of images. Transferred into the world of design this can be seen as the study of how symbols are depicted in design. This is different to iconology which is the study of meaning contained within iconographic symbols i.e.. the interpretation of symbols depicted in design. An interesting quote from this lecture was that "Visual evidence unlocks meaning". This to me shows the importance of visual media as it can give a more powerful and clearer message than words on a page.

Conclusion writing - Thursday 23rd March

This seminar was about how to write a good conclusion for our essays. I found this beneficial as this is the point at which I am at in the writing of my own essay. The main points of this were not to repeat what has already been said in the essay already, to sum up your answer to the question whilst understanding the limitations of a 2500 word limit, therefore explaining if given more words what you would explore further that has been missed out in the current essay that is also important to making an overall verdict in relation to the question.

Meme Maker - Monday 20th March

This seminar was a continuation of the lecture previous to it. It was about putting the process of appropriation into practise. The task we were given was to use a picture of either Nicola Sturgeon or Donald Trump. From this you then had to make a meme mocking them or something to do with their background. ours as a group was about the Scottish vote for independence. Basically we were mocking the fact that Scotland had already voted against being independent once but Sturgeon campaigns as if the whole of Scotland is wanting independence like herself. She is giving the world the message that Scotland wants independence when in actual fact they have already voted against it.

Perspectivism 2 - Monday 20th March

This lecture was based around the idea of appropriation which is the intentional borrowing, copying and alteration of pre-existing objects and images. A quote which particularly resonated with me from this lecture was "Those who do not want to imitate anything produce nothing" by Salvador Dali. This just made me think about how we have reached a point at which there is so much existing that no matter what we produce it will have similarities to something that has already been made and is out there already. I think the key thing to take from this is that you should be as well informed about design as possible so that when it comes to making your own work you can take inspiration from as many ideas as possible in order to produce an effective, well informed piece of design.

Abstract analysis - Thursday 16th March

This seminar was based upon looking over our first attempts at writing an abstract about our essays. We then did a peer assessment exercise. The main feedback I got from this was to not address paragraphs by calling them for example "The first paragraph is about". The way I was told to do it was not to separate them and to try and make a better flow to their work.

Postproducing - Monday 13th March

In this seminar we looked at postproduction in further detail by using existing materials in order to make something new. We worked in small groups in order to complete this task. Our group did not really come to one clear outcome but had several different experiments that we made in this time. Most of the pieces were forms of collage of the images that we had been given cut up as shown above. After this lecture I decided to develop upon the idea of making something out of existing materials. In this instance I used some of my own photography and broke it down to then combine it with other pieces in a digital collage effect. The final outcome is shown below along with the 3 images that I used to make the piece. I used a grid to select strips of two of the images with other picture underneath them. I then deleted this to partially reveal the bottom image. However at this point I felt as if not enough of the bottom picture was revealed and it made the design quite confusing to look at, looking almost like a tartan design. Therefore I used the elliptical marque tool in order to reveal the centre section of the design.

Postproduction - Monday 13th March

This essay was interesting to see something unexpected interpreted in the form of design. Postproduction is the stage in production of a media output, typically involving editing and the edition of other elements. However the definition we focused upon which can be transferable to a design context was taking data that already exists and transforming it into something new. Examples of this in terms of design can be collages which use something old or from another context and then make it into an art form. The various examples shown were interesting and even unusual as shown by Marcel Duchamp's piece that includes a signed urinal. Despite this it is another thing that I an possibly experiment with in my own work.

Abstract - Thursday 9th March

This seminar was about how to write an abstract which is a brief summary of your essay. I found this useful as I have never written an abstract for an essay before. To develop our skills we watch a short clip which we then described as a group in an abstract style. This exercise is at the bottom of the page pictured above. The short film that we watched to come up with this was quite entertaining as it was about a man making a black hole on a printer then exploiting it for his on gain before being punished for his actions.

Jay Payne lecture and seminar - Monday 6th March

The lecture and seminar were a continuation of the same task. Jay had asked us to not take notes in the normal manner and to draw instead. The seminar was simply advancing these drawings into something more aesthetically pleasing. All of the smaller drawing are objects that were in Jay's presentation at some point that I have picked out. The background with the various lines is inspired by his glitch video of a train and car journey. The intention behind these lines was to create this same affect.

Diagrams - Thursday 9th February

In the seminar we did are usual peer assessment of a section of your essay. The only suggestion given to me was that I could go into more detail about who is putting the money into football the allow the big money signings and other such things. We then used the diagrams to compare with the people we were sat with to see if their diagrams could be related to our work in anyway, one of the ones I was shown was about the sales of Adidas each year which could be useful if the data was more refined to be specifically about football.

Perspectivism - Monday 6th February

The skills used in this seminar were transferable to graphic design as it was about seeing things from other people's perspectives and putting yourself in their shoes to make assumptions about their lives. In graphic design you have to make assumptions about your target audience to see things from their perspective so that you can produce work that appeals to their interests. The image below was one of the images in which we had to look at it from the perspective of the person within it. I chose to take a satirical approach of saying "The woman in the image is an attraction at a circus in a freak show, due to the fact that she is a a woman with a beard and moustache".

Animation - Monday 6th February

This lecture by Tracey about animation was interesting as it made me think deeper about animation that we see in our everyday lives and how there is a deeper meaning to it then we initially interpret. I quote that particularly resonated with me was the idea presented by Terry Eagleton that "Popular culture is a category which floats ambiguously between the anthropological and the aesthetic". It made me think about how animation is essential bringing life to an inanimate object and can be used in a very powerful way. Popular animation is used to appeal to a wider audience of both the adults and the children in a subtle way which keeps them as the more obvious audience. The use of playful politics can help it keep up to date with current affairs whilst also appealing to children through their interests. I have then gone on to research examples of cases in which cartoons use alternative meanings in their work. A popular example of this is the characters in Spongebob Squarepants who there are many theories and meanings that older audiences have interpreted from this children cartoon. Obviously most of these are just speculation, however one that I found particularly interesting and convincing was the idea that the main characters have the characteristics of the 7 deadly sins.
- Lust — SpongeBob
- Sloth — Patrick
- Wrath — Squidward
- Pride — Sandy
- Greed — Mr. Krabs
- Envy — Plankton
- Gluttony — Gary
Even in 1932 in one of the first Disney movies "The Three Little Pigs" at the final scene when the pigs prove victorious over the wolf a portrait hangs in the background of their father who it is implied has been slaughtered. This is clearly inappropriate for children and would mainly only be noticed by adults.

Interpreting media - Thursday 2nd February

In this seminar we had to watch animations and draw 4 key scenes very quickly and then describe them. The quality of these drawings is poor but it had to be as you couldn't take too much time or focus on your drawing otherwise you would not get 4 scenes down as you would miss the rest of the animation. It was a difficult task as can be seen by the drawings but it benefitted our descriptive skills to be able to write about those drawings.

Drawing game - Monday 30th January

This game was quite entertaining whilst also making you think about the moves which you made. Initially we played the game against each other which meant that eventually we got to a point at which one person would lose as there was not enough room to join up the points without intersecting others. The game with very limited when played in this way. However when our mentalities changed and we decided to work together in order to try and complete the game it was initially much easier but no matter how you play the game you eventually struggle for room on the page. In terms of thinking about alternative rules to add into the game, it would be interesting to see the game played with more participants. If these players were all playing against each other then the game would be much shorter which may be a flaw to this idea.

Structure, chance and algorithms - Monday 30th January

I found this lecture interesting as it was about designers that influence Rob's own work, many of whom where based in and around Huddersfield. The work shown was mainly made using coding and glitches. I didn't particularly like the style of the work however it was interesting for me to see alternative methods of producing work and I can appreciate the skill behind the work. It was interesting to see how mathematics and design, two seemingly contrasting subjects, can be brought together to produce pieces of work.

Essay skills - Thursday 26th January

This week was better as I have now refined my essay question as I was finding when writing the essay previously that I was just making general points where my new topic of branding within football allows my essay to be more focused. The feedback I received in response to the paragraph I wrote was that my writing was well structure and included relevant examples which backed up my points well. However the peer assessor felt as if my opening sentence could be more engaging and I needed to reference more of my examples. In addition to this we also had to bring in two images to analyse in a paragraph we wrote in lesson. My paragraph was about the San Jose Earthquakes or Quakers image. "The image shows the new style of branding for the San Jose Earthquakes. The original team moved in 2006 to become Houston Dynamo, however the badge and colours remained property of San Jose. To avoid being the same as the previous team, whilst maintaining the original identity, the club undertook a makeover."