Design

Overall I felt my design journal reflects on almost all concepts discussed in lectures, successfully documents the design process of both project 1 and 2, and reviews a few peer projects, as well as commenting on a few things related to design which I happened to stumble across at various times (found in other). 

Design Process:

• Three or more distinctly different approaches for one project but the other is a little less explored (distinction).
• Well developed designs but room for more refinement; some iterative development evident (distinction).

Reflection:

• All group and individual activities have been considered and discussed (distinction).
• Insightful reflection on lecture content, all areas discussed (high distinction).
• Thoughts on one reading and application to the design process (distinction).

Visual Representation:

• Clear visual record of group design activities showing most key decisions (distinction).
• Visual record of about half of the other group’s designs for both projects (high distinction).
• Moderate range of representational approaches used (distinction).

I may be marking myself to easily, but I feel that these are the criteria that I have fulfilled.

http://assignment2group2.tumblr.com/

I found it quite interesting to note that many groups including this one seemed to favour a news desk approach over filming an actual scene.  This makes telling the story of something like a war as seen in this video, as you don’t have to do any re-enactments of the actual battles.  I found this video to be quite thought provoking, if not fare fetched, and I think they managed to illustrate the concept of a war on gamers well within the video.  It also hard some light humour which worked well in getting me interested in the story.

Visual presentation is well constructed and supports the narrative.  The props/assets and settings have been used with skill (credit), the story is communicated clearly and is easy for everyone to grasp (distinction), and the idea explores the theme in an interesting and relevant way (distinction).

Our group didn’t really choose not to follow the design process, it almost just happened.  We still followed the first three steps given in this post, but when it came to the fourth, instead of developing ideas we just went straight to the making stage. As said previously, this method seemed to work fairly well for the type of film we were doing, but we probably could have refined our ideas more and this definitely would’ve meant we wouldn’t have filmed so much footage and wouldn’t have had so much to edit.  This could have resulted in a better end product.

I was not able to attend the initial design brief and had an exam on when the first group session was held.  As a result, I was not able to contribute to the group’s initial concepts for the direction of the narrative, but I was able to come up with a few ideas of my own.

Future:

• Apocalypse: overdone, cliché.
• Futuristic: robots, ai taking over: also cliché
• Return to the past: no more resources, continue living as ancestors did.
• Not too different from today: an office comedy?? Might work.

I noticed that I did not have any original ideas and this is perhaps because of just how much the future is portrayed in the media.

When I finally met up with the group I discovered that they had had a similar idea to me with the apocalypse and we decided to run with it.  We pitched it to the tutor who said that the idea was strong and we just needed a way to approach it.  He suggested not doing a drama, but trying to film a comedy, as that is what he’s seen works best in this project.

The initial theme of the project was trust and distrust, but this theme evolved into contact as the design process went on.

We then proceeded to try to storyboard our narrative, but this was unsuccessful,  instead we decide to go with a ‘found footage’ approach.  On this project we didn’t really follow any process of design and I think this actually worked quite well for us.  As it was filmed as found footage, us thinking on the go made it more realistic.

The only real form of structure we had was what the main points of the story were going to be:

• A starting point involving running
• Hiding
• Meeting someone we don’t trust
• Someone getting infected
• Infecting us all
• All of us dead

Our approach to this was to figure out how we wanted each of these scenes to work, filming them and filming large sections of footage including conversations, walking and running in between to give the film continuity.  In the end I believe that this process worked very well as it allowed for more time to film the content as there was less planning involved.  What this did mean though was there was a lot of footage to sift through before the final product was reached.  This was time consuming, and as a result of a computer crash, caused our submission to be entered a few hours late.  James completely all the editing as he was the only one of us experienced in using video editing software.  He did a fantastic job of editing almost an hour’s worth of video into just 4 and a half minutes.  Ellery then recorded the beginning narration which set the scene for the film. 

We decided to use a white noise effect in between each scene to indicate that the camera had been turned off.  This allowed us to stop and start the film wherever we wanted, and meant that the flow of the film was not terribly important.

http://team11design.tumblr.com/

In my opinion this design shows promise but it lacks any form of elegance and the end product is too literal.  The design is similar to one of my own group’s earlier concepts and it is interesting to note that whilst we decided to discard it for something more abstract, this group decided to keep it.  

The actual design itself does not interest me at all.  It looks like an ordinary archway in the park and by the way the design has been drawn out I fail to see how the shapes would actually make the different reflections look the same all the time.

The idea to try and trick the viewer into seeing an illusion is one that could work well, but I fear that here it has not been executed well at all.

Visual elements have been used fairly well but the poster presentation is a little rough (low pass), the design is reasonably resolved: the idea comes across but some elements seem unnecessary or don’t contribute greatly (pass), and the design idea uses the theme in a very obvious way.  It’s even a little boring (low pass).

http://groupthreeisawesome.tumblr.com/

I really like the final design of this project but I think the poster could have had a lot more work put into it.  There are not enough diagrams of the object and it does not state what it will be made out of.  The concept itself is intriguing and thought provoking, and the design has been well thought out.  It is abstract and would fit well in the park.

Visual elements have been used fairly well but the poster presentation is a little rough (low pass), the design is well resolved: it is clear and everything seems to belong together (distinction), and he idea behind the design employs the theme in an interesting and thoughtful way (distinction).

http://webmaster.olympusgaming.org/project1/

The windnest is aimed to give a feeling of being enclosed whilst still being open to air circulation.  When reading the companion writing to the design all I could think of was “wow that’s cool” and I was imagining abstract shapes all around myself with the wind swirling through and a view of the night sky, but in reality the design appears clunky and lacks the finesse the concept deserves.  

For this design I would say the visual elements have been used quite well and the poster is well presented (pass), the idea lacks polish: the idea is a little confused and it seems like there are parts that don’t really match or enhance it (low pass), and he idea behind the design relates to the theme in an interesting way (credit).

Lightness is a fleeting moment, when a helium balloon pops the lighter than air gas escapes into the atmosphere in an instant. Fleeting moments of lightness such as this occur when a floating rainbow appears in water vapour, or as heat dissipates into its surroundings. These nearly invisible moments of fleeting lightness inspired this design to capture such a moment for anyone who wishes to experience it. Naturally occurring moments of fleeting lightness have three stages, the escape, where the substance jets out into the normal air. The dispersion, where the substance billows outward and upward and the dissipation, where the substance trails off to become indistinguishable from the surrounding air. Our goal is to capture a fleeting moment and have it readily available for a person to witness through the circular aperture. The fleeting nature of the moment where the hot air interacts with the normal air is reinforced by visual barriers, these barriers only allow people in the right place to witness the instant of shimmering air escaping from the aperture.