19th March

During the first short animation session on Monday I began to realise certain challenging aspects of the stop frame method such as the limit placed on the drawn content of each frame. However I left the studio feeling fairly lost as there was very little actual instruction or explanation about the process of stop frame animation - something of which I have had very little experience. Watching the short clips of animation shown to us at the time, it was clear that taking control of how quikcly or slowly my animation would work became a factor too.

I enjoyed the workshop on interactivity very much as it was interesting how quickly we could get material together to create an animated, interactive page. Having only 30 minutes to think of an idea and collect photos/drawings of it made me think faster than usual and forced me to think more directly. I feel I have a good confidence with working on Flash software now and that I have enough understanding of it to be able to process good ideas for the interactive postcard brief.

Another successful life-drawing class on Wednesday meant I learned more about mark-making and illustrative techniques which are on another level to merely representing the scene I see in front of me mark for mark. The Thursday session helped me grasp the factors raised when using more than one type of paper in the same drawing and how important it is, in this case, to use tone effectively and make more effort to communicate depth and space. With every session my ability to trust what i see and react to it improves. I intend now to start being more varied in the materials I use as charcoal has been the dominant medium so far. I am however irritated at the fact that Simon has had to doubt the future of the Wednesday class due to the lack of communication between him and the models and the art school. In his busy profession on top of his own personal time, I can understand how Simon would be quick to finish classes if people are not punctual or communicative. In any case I hope the classes continue as I find his teaching extremely useful and the sessions to be one of few places where I feel I am actually learning valuable techniques and methods.

I found the Friday lectures very enjoyable which was probably down to Alex Franklin's knack for making the essentially boring and confusing world of interpretation entertaining and straightforward - afterall it would be ironic and unnecessary to use scholarly language and insight to explain the words of Barthes for example or any in depth and wordy consideration of art, as this would only be a repetition of the same incomprendable writings. In recent lectures I have walked away feeling like I had very little grasp of what the subject was all about and only had a list of examples of works to show for it. The lectures by Alex were easy to digest and universally informative.