Well, this is the first blog of my second year at the new and improved (?) Manchester College. Glad to see things havent changed that much over the summer break, well except maybe me. I didnt do a right lot over the break but was able to get a "do you want to design a website for me" job which can be seen here. Im happy with this site for a couple of reasons and they are mainly from a technical point of view. I created it in Flash and used alot of actionscript 3.0 coding to get it all working. It still has a menu which I dont like and no preloaders, both of which I want to fix. I love the fact it is all created in one timeline with about 6 frames (not including the actual photo content) and it refers to xml files and the images are completely manageable by the client. It has inspired me to relook at my own and the terry pratchett site I did last year. Using actionscript makes the files smaller and makes more sense to me - but that's me I guess. As a result of this website someone else might be interested in having me do a website for them. Probably the biggest compliment I can think of.
We have to present one of our briefs to the first years and I had to do mine today. I still hate and will probably always hate having to get up infront of alot of people and talk. I usually turn bright red and this is never a good response as it is very obvious to everyone you are nervous. But I have done it and it seemed to go down OK.
Contextual studies was fun and we learnt about the Bauhaus and Art Deco, we also got our marks back for the piece of work we did last year and to my total surprise I got a distinction. I only expected a pass but there you go. There were a few bad points but its a distinction never the less. We have alot of writing to do this year and I dont want to find myself in the same position as I did last year. Got to bite the bullet as they say. I wish the whole course was as well planned as Contextual Studies.
We have been working on our personal logos and yearly plan which doesnt seem to fit in with what Mike is planning in Contextual Studies but I will wait and see what happens. We have our first warm up brief "Room 101" which I am currently playing around with some ideas. With any luck tomorrow we will get the "DVD menu" brief.
