FINAL BLOG ENTRIES - Term 1 2010

Transferred over the final entries from the word blog onto posting, checking logical dates and headers etc.. Still keen to get to print the final renders today for my own portfolio and keen to get the website hosted with another company where speed may be less of an option.

Lovely to think everything was complete today but a final maths session of the year to look forward to later, hardly reason to rejoice. 

A LONG DAY

A demonstration in poor time management exercised here on my part. 

Having work still to do on the website & the carpark, both of which needed help from lecturers has left me fighting the clock & the attention of lecturers. Too much time stressing and too little actions led to trying to produce renders on a slow network approaching hand in. 

Wanted to match up the safety barriers in my final sketch design with the model but with my knowledge of Photoshop being limited & knowledge of Maya equally slow left no option but to compromise the 3D model design. Hence we now have polygon pipe work rather than intricate patterned barriers.

With no support today on the web I had to rely on my peers for help to conclude the website design & was not alone in our class. Final ignorance, I did not know how the burning of disks works on a Mac & just how long it takes. Next time my time management won’t leave me on the last train home!

FINAL CRAMMING!

Working to a Deadline.

Crammed a lot into a day thanks mostly to having to pick up the old man from the airport a 1:15am !

Pulling the pieces together for the car park, filling in any gaps and appling all the research into credible notes and research document now pushing 30 pages before final edit.  Steep pre-fabricated safety barriers instead of a Saturday night movie is not my idea of a week-end. Note to self – Work harder in the week! 

HATES THE No 74 BUS

Crammed extra classroom time today and looked at adding rendering to the carpark model.  Created the blinns with textures I downloaded and applied these to the model. Also added a sun&sky lighting as well as experimenting with Mental Ray Rendering which is ideal for Architectual visualisations such as the current brief.

Google SketchUp. The class I sat in on today were talking about a programme called Google sketch up. Looks ideal for this type of assignment as it is primarily a CAD type programme that is more user friendly than other programs. Looked this up on line & watched the brief youtube trailer.  http://sketchup.google.com/product/gsupro.html

Mental note as something to take on a trial.

Only days to go so another day of working late after the no 74 bus finally showed 

WEB SITE DEVELOPS

Understanding the Media

Continued to develop the content for the website. Used Illustrator to create a new artboard to include a new about me page and content for this page to include on the website. Agreed for the logo to feature on each page (top right) on the website as a common thread across all the pages on the site. For each of the areas I have decided to write on IE About/Philosophy/ Work again using the logo over the type face proved to be a good look to break up a page that could be text heavy.

Also, with Marks help created the layout for the page showing my work. This could with time be tweaked to have each layer offer a link to a different project where the appropriate layer active as you hover the mouse pointer over it.

Introduction to specialist pathway:

Revisit the car park

Focused on the central tower and covered how to copy the side to make the 4 sided image by joining the edges and bridging across the four corners to make the tower a solid object. 

INTRODUCING MR CONSOLI & HIS MAYA YOU TUBE GODSEND

Spent a lot of non timetabled study to work through the you tube classes that Robert Consoli posted from his funded work at Hull University.

The HullUniLecturer video classroom includes software tutorials, design lectures (coming soon) and examples of students' work from The University of Hull @ Scarborough's Digital Design programmes. This interactive site encourages designers from around the world to participate in the classroom experience along with students currently enrolled on the degree programmes.

This is a pilot programme supported by a recent research grant, and your participation is encouraged and vital to the project. Your comments, video ratings and video responses to the exercises at the end of the series are especially welcome. Please join us and subscribe to this channel now. We'll look forward to seeing your work!

http://www.youtube.com/user/HullUniLecturer

These series of tutorials gave me a little confidence to play with some basic elements of Maya in the hope of utilising the skills in my project, however this was not the case except for the texture on the blinns.

Found the frustrations of not being competent in the basics of Maya annoying given the time I tried to invest in improving. The research for this project came along as I revised how the roof of the car park will look when I know how in Maya. I found a couple of sites on-line where Church’s have used solar power created from solar powered roofing to generate energy while mixing the materials of the original building with slate roof tiles and solar and how this looks in context. 

WHAT IS SUCCESS IN NEW MEDIA ?

Seminar Discussion between both the New Media & Graphics groups.

My own thoughts came from research into how business has encompassed different forms of new media into business models.  The adoption into big business seems to have created the rise of digital marketing agencies such as Blue Grass Digital http://www.bluegrassdigital.com/ have influenced the way different forms of new media IE: Web/Txt/ Graphics/Social Network can combine to promote business growth. There are numerous models that have been created to act as a framework for business leaders and Marketing departments. 

It is my argument that the individual success of these different media types and how they are adopted and integrated into today’s business strategy goes a long way to showing ‘success in new media’.

The discussion covered many facets from the adoption of txt messaging, the development of gaming and it’s move to being another social network medium.

The talk was heavily led by the popular belief in the room of how capitalist gain was the ‘key’ indicator of ‘success’ in new media & graphics. Are we moving towards a society that is ‘morally bankrupt’?  

My other argument that I did not raise was the increase in college courses that fall under a new media title and how success of new media has trickled down into education and as graduates who will then find work in the business world. New colleges have been created that service this demand and some have been built around the Technology and Media alone.

Example: New Media Technology College in Dublin

http://www.nmtc.ie/about.htm

Other Ideas:

1) Another after thought was to be an example of a Novelist who pursues a piece of work that may not be well received from its audience nor attain critical acclaim or money from a publisher. They could choose to take work as a journalist where a paper/magazine may pay far better with a higher chance of getting paid work and become a known name. Is this relevant?

2) Intellectual Property

Can you make a name for yourself if your employed and the work you produce becomes the property of your employer?