#i record a timelapse every time i start a new drawing so might as well!

[persimminwrites]

process timelapse for him!

[dotfalla]

Evaluation - D&AD Adobe/Ladbible

This unit was able about D&AD, a design competition that asks designers and students to be as innovative and design conscious as possible. The amount of briefs is vast and each one asks of something unique. However what they all have in common is they all give the opportunity to develop thought provoking ideas. D&AD initiates real life design problems and asks for solutions, just like a client coming to an agency asking for a new ad campaign or brand packaging. I feel these briefs resonate with work I would like to do in my career and therefore I felt I would really thrive within this unit. How I was wrong. I had given myself so much pressure to come up with this perfect idea for the Monotype brief that I could not come up with one, or settle. I was going back and forth with ideas and getting myself stressed out for no reason. I needed to take a step back and rethink the brief. After visiting Hastings to see my grandmother I thought I might have got somewhere with the tradition of old black net huts but without going back to Hastings, I would have had to get all my content online which was not really the essence of the monotype brief. It was at that point that it was suggested to me that I look at the Adobe Creative Cloud/Ladbible brief which asks for a film or animation about social good. Suddenly I felt relieved that I had an idea and that I could stick with. I went back and thought about social good issues that I could relate to and in my tutorial I mentioned students who don’t get their 5 a day or eat a balanced meal. This brought more ideas into play such as examining student fridges and if there was a way of seeing the student behind the fridge. I also went on to look at how students juggle part time jobs, music and sport commitments as well as a social life at university. I looked at Ladbible’s sub brand, Studentbible that shows a lot of memes that show students struggling in a comedic way, but I wanted to know the facts. 

I wanted to find some statistics so I spoke to Heidi at student services who sent me lots of great credible sources which really highlighted some major issues. All connected to mental health. Stress can lead to bad sleep which leads to bad health. So I decided to focus on the four main pillars of Money Worry, Lack of Sleep, Stress and Employability. 

I decided to use props, these were fun to do but didn’t give off the bold, and visible facts that I wanted to show. Especially after I found such great research from Heidi. I attempted to film the video using a go pro and a head mount. While the go pro had a great wide-angled lens, it was nearly impossible to keep every frame in shot. The lighting was awful due to the student house had 5 out 8 down lights blown. If I thought the video had potential I might have attempted to bring lights in but I felt the video was a lost cause as it was not as successful as I had thought it would be. 

That is when I decided to animate, but I had already thought of idea number 2, which involved following a character through their sleep deprivation, stress etc. I began by drawing a character, the brief was by Adobe so I looked into using all their applications. On the Ipad there is Adobe Draw, an illustrator style app for Ipads which allows you to draw using the apple pencil. The best part of Adobe Draw is that it records you drawing the artwork and then turns it into a timelapse which you can export. This gave me the inspiration to screen recording all the work I did on photoshop and After effects. Not only does this show how I used Adobe Applications, but was the easiest way to show developments within the illustration. All developments are seen in the digital timelapse but there isn’t much time to really stop and see what I had been up to.

So I thought I’d go into depth what I did during that timelapse in my evaluation. 

I started by drawing a character and as I created more backgrounds, I had a lot of fun creating layers and and different clothes but soon realised that there was a limit on layers. It was then that I realised that I could export the entire project as a Photoshop File to Creative Cloud Folder. Once I got it up in Photoshop I was able to add more backgrounds and more clothes. The more the frames the longer/more interesting the video. It was in Photoshop that I could choose the delay on each frame which meant that it flipped through but was not too fast. 

I had created the first draft, with basic type talking about ‘hidden issues’ etc but knew it didn’t have the ‘wow’ factor so I took it to the a sign up thinking the worst of it. Luckily I had good feedback, the tutors liked the idea and I had some positive feedback on my illustration. I was asked to rethink the type and the end title. Which I really agreed with, I thought about what it was that I was trying to say: Students, if you’re struggling there is help out there. But I know that, while AUB has a great student services and other pastoral facilities, there are universities out there that do not. So i thought about organisations who are out there to help students and came across Mind. I know Mind because my friend’s dad has dealings with them when he was in a very bad place. I thought this was a great way to showcase real help out there, I didn’t want it to be wishy washy so including Mind brand makes it more credible, in the same way I found more credible resource by Heidi. 

I found that research was difficult to do as not much was out there, my illustration research came from my own skills and was not really planning on using them, they were just attempts to see if it would work. If I was doing this again I would have taken more time in choosing an illustrative style. Most of my research was based on statistics and finding out what students struggle with.

I feel like visually my idea looks quite nice, the research and concept in mediocre, the existing research is lacking and the academic research is higher then normal (most are on blog). I think my experimental process was successful with a lot of attempts and planning. My idea generation was vast but not very well focused. At first I didn’t work very independently, I depended on being told what was or was not a good idea, but once I realised the core reason for this unit I started making and doing things off my own back, constantly trying new things and to do better. Time management was overall okay, except I wish I had buckled down with an idea sooner to really have a good go at my own work. I rsuhed myself and tried to take on too much, which has made my research suffer. I am hoping my own critique, other’s, blog research and the academic research will suffice.

Overall I am happy with this project, I will contemplate handing it into D&AD and I am glad I can put it into my portfolio.