Week 15; A Fresh Start with a Funeral

Hello again! So we meet again after the Christmas break and this first week back has been quite eventful.

To start off the week we were given a project to help us with the forthcoming character project. We were given a low-poly female body to model in a week. Now, halfway through this week is where the fun begins. On the Thursday, my power supply for my desktop blew, leaving me stranded for a computer, only being able to access one in labs – The death of my computer. This was a rather awkward situation as I was working from home on modelling the body of the female character so I only got so far.

In better news, this lead my back to my love of reading; since I was going to be without a computer for a while. So, I decided to revisit an old favourite of mine which I never finished; The Rachel Papers, by Martin Amis. An Intriguing and somewhat challenging book (vocabulary-wise) which I distinctly remember reviewing for a Year Nine project in secondary school, only to be told it covered “Rather inappropriate subjects”. I digress, the book itself is a fascinating read into the mind of a highly intelligent, yet uncomfortably awkward teen, Charles Highway, on his journey of the last three months of being a teenager. A highly acclaimed book that I'd recommend to most (once I've finished it, anyway), as so far it's been a gripping story and has more than sufficiently challenged my vocabulary.

Back to more familiar ground with the modelling side: This week was an exercise in body topology of the female form. I spent most of my time trying to replicate the topology given to us on the reference plane for the modelling process, and even though I didn't get to finish the model before my computer blew, I still have a good understanding of how to go about modelling my character for the Village Project.

For Critical Studies this week we were given a new perspective on how we should be constantly evaluating and re-evaluating ourselves as we continue on the course. There were some very helpful things I need to do which I really hadn't thought of before like filing my marked work away so I can reflect on the feedback on a later date. I also need to actively do something about my feedback, something like making a plan and sticking to it, maybe pinning it up in my room to remind myself. Also compiling all the data of my feedback and trying to work out some trends to improve on. The lucky thing is that our feedback is either verbal (Therefore I need to have a notebook handy to take a note down) but mostly digital so I can always have a copy online to file away. 

  We were also given a sheet to write an action plan for our next two years at university and analyse our personal strengths and weaknesses. From these things I determined some future goals; including every Tuesday working through an hour of tutorials to improve my overall knowledge of the programs and medium I'm working with and writing a blog schedule to strictly follow.

I have also determined over the Christmas break that I need to make time to work on my ability to draw, which will come with practice of life drawing and extra life studies outside of taught class time.

So it's not all bad news, I've rekindled my passion for reading, and in a couple of weeks I'll be able to have my computer back and upload the model lost in progress.

I'll join you next week when I hopefully will be the proud owner of a new power supply!