Reflective summery

This year I would say I have learnt almost a comparable amount to my whole other three years at University. My project has gone from very ambiguous beginnings to a something that I consider to have a sound foundation of theory behind it and a lot of personal value to myself.  I have encountered many gaps in my knowledge and skillset, and would say I perhaps took on a project with not enough of the fundamentals for me to realise it to its full potential, however, I now feel that I am substantially more equipped and informed that at the start of the project.

My main areas where I was lacking within my theory were the very information that I was trying to convey. I took higher physics in high school but when trying to understand to the level of being able to visually break down the elements to best be visualised was very difficult. I tackled this mostly in the first semester by immersing myself in every science video that I could find that were used in classrooms in science classes, luckily most of these are now uploaded to YouTube. By watching these I gained great insight as to how I could creative display them. This was the same approach I took to tackling my shortcomings within biology as I had never taken this past 2^nd year of high school; it was one of the biggest mind hurdles. This was due to me having little background knowledge of the topic, so I found one of the main projects ‘DNA library’ to be really challenging as I had to go back to basics and brainstorm how best to visualise it to myself.  The fact that I started this project due to the struggles I encountered trying to lean the topics with the limited visual resources in school, gave a sense of irony as I sat trying to learn the broad strokes and finer details to better visualise them.
Areas that proved to be especially difficult to grasp were the ins and outs of genetic coding within chromosomes and DNA,

Looking at BBC bitesized and the online science videos also gave me a great insight into the visual style and age range that they were aimed at. This proved important to my project and to my personal development because it allowed me to analyse where my projects could be used in real situations within education or certain audiences, but it also allowed me to reflect on the lack of or poor visuals within in the industry and why this might be.

Bridging these gaps of what I knew about the topics I was trying to portray obviously greatly improved how I could break down the information and my offhand knowledge, but this also made thinking of new creative ways to communicate the messages, allowing me to develop my creative process and think outside the box.

Another area where my knowledge was think on the ground was semiotics and theory behind communication itself, I feel like I have a whole new level of understanding when It comes to how we learn and crate meaning though reading books that I read and online articles across difference disciplines dealing with using visual metaphors. This enabled me to think about the nature of my project itself and allow it to become more abstract in some areas. While reflecting on the process of trying to show how to learn something made it even clearer that everyone learns differently, as everyone has their own interpretations that are based on their own experiences. With this in mind it allowed me to be more creative as an artist, but also to realise that it is almost a feeling of understanding than I am trying to convey.  I wanted to be able to create something that can evoke a sense of connection between two objects that showcases their commonalities giving an insight into the working of a complex idea. However, this is only at a simple or basic level to establish a fundamental understanding and allows for creation and adaptation of one’s own mental model. In summary its helped me to grow my project and alter my expectations of learning theory.

Moving onto some of my practical skill gaps, I had never touched Ndynamics or any particles before this semester which again is hindsight was setting myself up for a challenge. After attending some of Lynns Dynamics classes I soon started using what I had learned to make my own simulations. I used these in tandem with some creative uses of spheres and emitters to what would in the end be the basis for the metaphorical visuals in my final animation.

This knowledge then grew when I was researching tutorials on how to make my own lava lamp, as I came across one that had modelling, dynamics and lighting in a project.  This was immensely helpful and really was a catalyst to my personal development and the project itself in several ways. Firstly I have struggled since the beginning of university with modelling but after the tutorial I am a lot more confident with the basics and would not be so put off making something from not knowing where to start. The tutorial also covered a very large section on dynamics that included an algorithm to make the lava float up and down. This greatly improved my knowledge of how the inputs change the outputs of animation, mesh and general understanding of volume axis fields.  Another areas where I was lacking in experience was with shaders, which I have now grasped a good understanding of how to using the mia_x materials that renders with mental ray and also combing that with sub surface shaders to generate a very versatile effect. Im sure that this will be invaluable knowledge and will help with future projects as it creates a foundation for me to build upon.  The last area the tutorial cover that was also of great benefit to my leaning was with the lighting section, where I learned how to use settings that were effective for production and rendering of the scene. It also guided me on using the physical sun and sky in tandem with portal lights. So overall it gave me a fantastic foundation on so many levels that it allowed me to further most aspects of my project and practice my polishing my main scenes.

Another technical reflection would have been on learning new aspects about render layers and render passes that are another feather in my creative cap, I had loosely used them before but looking up articles and uses for altering the final image.  Overall im a very proud of my own achievements using Maya, I personally have never made something that looks as polished as it is in my final project. There are a lot of things still to develop on such as setting up complex scenes to a better degree and establishing a better filing system. Another big point that I need to work on is post production effects such as cutting the final animations together and then polishing them within that. The final developmental point is ironically my ability to maintain development documentation, I find that blogging is still just not my forte and will perhaps for future development use mixed media such as a voice over and images to convey my progress.