(Written Aug 30th 2017)
Week 3 has come and gone, each week passing quicker than the previous as I become adjusted to life in KEA.
I still have many tasks to do and am becoming more involved in the workings of KEA; this week I began devising ideas for the upcoming Play Doh Day on the 16th September, the freedom of the task make it difficult to come up with a single solid idea as there were so many possibilities that this project could lead to.
Kim helped with these ideas by us playing a game with a set of cards with random illustrations and a set of three action dice each. We selected three cards at random and rolled our dice, then with a timer we wrote down as many narrative ideas as we could, inspired by the cards and dice. This allowed us to create interesting and playful narratives setting a path to how we could develop these particular ideas to create a stop motion Play Doh animation.
However after developing the most favoured narrative and drawing out a rough storyboard, it came to light that it was too long and that we would not have the time to create this animation in time for Play-Doh Day. Instead we have opted for a looping animation yet still aiming for a playful feel and leave the original idea for another day.
I also continued developing the concept for the KEA explainer video, writing out the visuals alongside the script to properly explain my ideas and also help myself imagine how the visuals would flow and work out the timings for each visual. However some of the visuals were still too literal, I have been researching into how I can avoid this and other ways that I can visualise particular scenes in the script, by looking into animation Youtube channels such as the TED Ed channel and Charisma on Command Channel.
Though alongside this Kim had put together a research task for myself to look into the different storyboard styles, which is something I have little experience with. However I have always enjoyed creating narratives behind my illustrations.
I discussed these different styles with Kim mentioning which ones I particularly liked and disliked while she also spoke of the reasons and ideas behind the storyboards and why some worked and some didn’t.
Still now I am learning so much and developing how I work best as an illustrator, whist improving upon other areas such as storyboarding. I have been given enough freedom to express my ideas, yet being given enough challenges that I am needing to do plenty of research and not settling on the first idea I come up with.
I still have plenty to do, with projects to complete and projects to begin as I continue to develop as a creative individual and become more involved with KEA and upcoming projects.
