COP Evaluation

COP1 End of Module Evaluation

Although I did not accomplish as much as I had hoped for this module I do feel noticeably more educated and informed about art culture, history and industry as well as have a solid grasp of academic writing. My favorite aspect of the module was the Lecture program. Richard Miles and Fred Bates are fantastic lecturers; after every lecture I attended I felt that not only did I fully understand what was taught but I was comfortable enough with the topics to communicate them to other people and contribute to conversations with professionals within the design industry. 

In terms of my academic writing, it has been about four years since I have done anything of the sort and I have certainly never written a paper longer than 1,000 words. However the word count was not so much of a challenge as the triangulation and referencing. These things are quite foreign to me however I did find the process quite enjoyable once I had gotten the gist of it. Taking on Harriet’s advice, I read through several academic papers as well as articles and interviews and took separate notes for each of them pulling out quotes that I found particularly relevant to my thesis. Once I had absorbed these sources, I jumped back into my essay to incorporate them into my thesis and build my argument to be stronger.

When reading through my paper, I wish I had made more time to refine it. As usual for me I became inspired too little too late and got into the flow of things just before the deadline. In January I wrote out the first draft to my paper that was essentially a disorganized mind dump. I had spent the previous two months absorbing content and spilling it all out on paper. Because I don’t have a lot of previous experience in writing long term papers, I did not know how to go about the process efficiently and ended up testing out a few different methods until I landed on one that worked for me. If I had more time I would continue to triangulate with sources past the ten I had used for reference. I have a few theories of my own in terms of my thesis and it would have been interesting to find sources that supported my thoughts. 

When it came to the animated response I had a clear idea straight away and although I did explore a few others, came back to the original. The plan was to create an animation that compared two different methods of animation; Traditional and Digital. Because of certain circumstances outside of my control, I lost a lot of time and ended up animating much less of what I had hoped initially. Initially my idea was to create an animation that traveled through different methods as it moved. As the deadline approached, I realized I did not have enough time to complete my idea so I modified it; using a sentimental story, I created an animation using traditional techniques and incorporated some hand drawn elements using digital animation. This is meant to highlight the idea that traditional and digital animation methods are simply that; methods of animation and will continue to be used either as a combination or apart from each other based on what communicates the story best.

In conclusion, this was one of my more favorite modules. It is refreshing to experience a more academic side of animation and design and I feel that I have learned a lot through the process and even though I am forced to leave the course due to unavoidable financial difficulties, I intend and hope to continue exploring art on a much deeper historical and cultural level.