I am on holiday

Will try to update in the next 3 months but I’m not promising anything. It’s SUMMATIME!

Term 3 stuff

Just a few things I thought I probably should post even if I don’t feel like I have anything to say about it. It’s too hot.

Term 3 start

I can’t believe how fast this schooling business is going, I’m on the verge of an anxiety attack with all my still-unlaid plans. It felt like I was running in place but now it’s more like I’m falling behind! I thought I was stepping it up but it looks like I’ve got to push even harder! Huhu.

School starts this week but my days are Wednesdays and Thursdays (again). This time I start late on Wednesday and end late. Would you believe that I have classes till 10pm? Insane. That may work out fine for me though creativity-wise. We’ll see if I churn out vastly improved stuff.

Gotta get back on the ball till 3rd week of November then freedom for 3 months! How awesome is that?

Term 2: sum up

So I completed all requirements a day  early. I slept in today and faffed about the entire morning. Feels good to have that pressure off, at least for the next week or so anyway.

Among some of the things I learned this term is how to make animated GIFs using Photoshop. I kind of knew how to do it before, but this time I know how to do it properly. Obviously it’s way more limited than Flash, but it’s a good place to start and it’s perfect for simple animations.

I’ve decided that I’d to learn more about animation as I move along in this course. This is where my obsessive behavior will come in handy.

UPDATE: Still need to figure out how to make the GIFs work on this stupid blog. Hang on.

This last one is actually for a CD package design project. We were meant to create a banner to “promote” our CD.

Term 2: Website

I really enjoyed making a simple website for one of my classes. We started out with a week on sitemap planning, then another week working on the wireframe and layout design on Illustrator (I was thinking of working directly on Dreamweaver but this other method worked out so much better), then 2 weeks to finalise things on Dreamweaver.

There’s a lot of things I wanted to do differently, but I’ll get on that when I know how to actually do them. I came up with 16 HTML docs in total.

Weeks 5 and 6

Had heaps more work done. Submitted newspaper and magazine layout spreads, which I enjoyed VERY much. There’s a third one left to do for that class, a book spread, which is probably going to be the easiest since it’s not going to be too fancy. I’ll do a simple novel layout for that.

Still have a few more pending things that I have to complete in the next 3 weeks. A simple website portfolio using mainly HTML (not even XHTML!), a silly blog thing which I’ll probably end up linking to this one since I probably won’t have any time to update both and I’m bad enough as it is, that book spread I mentioned earlier, a 4-panel CD design (which is fun and challenging=difficult) and THAT GRAPHIC NOVEL. Huhu I’m so behind on that one.

I can’t believe this term is going so fast. I do work half the time, but I know I’ve been living the moment and putting in the time and work, immersing myself in the learning process. It’s still going so fast. I’m almost afraid to finish this course and still feel like a moron about design.

OMG I totally forgot another thing we’re supposed to be handing in by Wednesday.

Middle of week 4

We’ve been doing nearly all of our work in class for this term, as opposed to being given briefs, working on them a little bit in class and then carrying on the rest of the work at home. Which is what last term was all about. I have to say, I like how things are being done this term. I hardly do any work at home anymore, which I wouldn’t have been able to do anyway since my days are booked solid with work and work and other activities.

Will write about progress in more detail soon.

Also, I got Term 1’s results earlier. I passed with flying colors in most of them and will probably contest a grade for one of them. It was the only unstellar grade I got and I’m wondering why. I did all of the work and handed everything on time, so it’s just a bit odd. Unless he thought my work was that bad.

Enter week 3

Freaking out!

Things to do:

• 45 pages of what will hopefully pass off as a graphic novel at the end of 8 weeks. Have to submit 15 pages by Thursday
• 1st major project for a markup language class involving web layout sketches of wireframes and a written report on things researched and learned (nothing scary, we’re just getting started on HTML but it is so time-consuming). Also due Thursday.

Last week we had to turn in twenty-four 10cm x 10cm thumbnails applying 6 design principles. I barely had time to finish! And I totally forgot to take pictures before handing them in :’( PLUS I found out afterwards that it only makes up 5% of total grade! WTF! And I spent so much time on it. I think we should be given more time to do these things. Or more marks for the time-consuming ones.

Also I should probably cut down on my extra-curricular activities (i.e. work + volunteering).

Term 2 start

I have a great timetable this term, only 2 days a week from 9am to 5:30pm. The schedules in general are a lot better than last term’s.

We had our first day today and it went alright. We’ve got only 3 teachers and 5 subjects and the topics seem a bit more difficult than those from last term. I’ve got to make sure I step it up to stay on top of things. It’s going to be a lot more challenging now that I’m juggling two jobs and a few volunteer responsibilities. It’s good to have all these things going on but I need to keep reminding myself that school takes top priority.

We’ve also got intro to multimedia this term and I’m pretty psyched about that. There’s also HTML basics involved and I’m going to take this opportunity to do some advanced learning on my own. We’ve also got more typography as well, although it looks heaps more difficult too.

So for tomorrow we’ve got 2 long classes but they look like they’ll be interesting. Will keep you posted.

Term 1 summary

It started off slow and unimpressive but little by little I learned, experiment and had little sparks of creativity go off in my brain. Administration could definitely be improved a lot more but all in all, I had a positive experience and as much as I’m going to miss the break (and the extra income from all the extra hours I was able to work), I’m looking forward to starting term 2.

So tomorrow I’m off to school bright and early to get my next timetable. Hoping it’s a good one and not one that has all the silly 6-hour breaks between classes.