Heroes and Heroines Assignments

This Assignment i really enjoyed, and thought I got a lot out of it. In spite of this, I feel that my final presentation wasn't too good, but there are reasons for that which I will go into later.

I initially did loads of research on all the people on my list of 27. That in turn really got me into using the blog more. I also really discovered a lot about the subjects, and found a lot of inspiration, many of the sources were new to me. This was a pleasant surprise. I especially was interested in Hi-Res!, Saul Bass, Barnbrook, Spike Jonze, Kyle Cooper but decided to focus on Michel Gondry. I just found his work to be most exciting, so I just went with my gut instinct and researched his work. I also chose to review one of his music videos for my critical studies essay. This was a piece I had loved for years, and I really wanted a chance to find out more, so I combined these two assignments to delve deeper into it:

I worked very hard on my essay, and found that really stretched my brain, especially as I'd not written one since 1988. Then I got stuck into setting up the presentation, which was essentially a Keynote that had to be done with Flash according to the brief. I spent a lot of time doing paperwork for my last Flash brief "26 Clicks', and had basically realised last time that I had set myself a task which was never going to happen quickly with no knowledge of Flash. This time I set out to make something really basic and actually get it finished. I still wnated it to look good, and this was still quite a lot to get my head around in a short space of time.

I found from here on in that I pretty much forgot about the presentation and spent all my time on the Flash job. I learned a lot, and once I got started I really wanted to finish it to my satisfaction. Ultimately this never happened, but i got it mostly there. On the day of the presentation I was still fiddling with it just before the deadline, and there were still things wrong with it. The presentation was very straight-forward, so I decided to try and experiment more. I set about doing a simple animation idea for the intro as a bit of an homage to Gondry, using kids fridge magnet letters spelling out the title of the brief and Michel Gondry. I also wanted it to sync in time to music, which I'd heard off a lot of people wasn't a good thing to do in Flash as it just doesn't keep time properly. I found ourt that this is indeed the case, even though i'd gone to great lengths to make it really simple.

On the day of the presentation I'd not rehearsed what I was going to say, and I have also been a terrible public speaker all my life, so when the time came I was a bit stressed, and didn't really coem across all that well. I was still happy with what I'd done despite this, and I now really want to get my flash skills in place, so I can intuitively use flash and be as creative as I'd like to be sooner rather than later. I am currently working my way though a hands on training manual for Flash 6, then later want to look at "Flash To The Core", the hands on training for Flash 8, and the Moock actionscript book.