Thursday was a good day in college. I got stuck in with my CD design project, using both Photoshop and InDesign to create it. I showed Brian and he was impressed. As I've said in the past though, it's always hard to tell whether that is genuine, or whether he's just doing it to stroke my ego, since he says "that's great that", to everyone and everyone's stuff is certainly not great.
It felt very laid back the whole of his lesson, and yet very productive as well. Brian sits at the computer next to me so it's quite easy just to chat to him while I get on with my work. I try to socialise with him as I would with any of my friends and to that end, I feel that I have gained his respect.
We were talking about stuff like the new Mac Mini and how we both like it. I asked him for his opinions on the stuff I was doing, and he gave some helpful advice. I also showed him some of my artwork and to one piece he replied "have you ever thought about sending some of your stuff in to Computer Arts?", which was a huge compliment. I replied, saying that I didn't think my stuff was anywhere near good enough to be sent there, but the fact that he said it made me feel good.
By the end of the lesson, I had finished what I had set out to do, which was create the CD booklet and I printed it out. I looked pretty impressive if I do say so myself. I was very pleased with it.
Lunch was spent just hanging about on my own in the class, waiting for Daniel's lesson to start. I got on with my Flash animation at that point and I was hoping that Daniel wouldn't come over and ask me to show it him, as I absolutely hate showing half finished work to people. It makes less of an impact when you show the final thing to them. Sadly, he did come over and asked to see it and I voiced my objections halfheartedly and showed him. He was sitting to my right and behind me slightly so I couldn't see his expressions, but once the 30 second animation had finished I turned round and his face was kind of beaming. I've never seen Daniel react in such a way to any of my work before.
He just said to keep working on it and it didn't matter if it wasn't finished by next Thursday as he was planning on giving a week extension. Still, if I'm going to be presenting all of my work on Thursday, I want everything to be complete. I don't want to show something that's only half finished. It'll look stupid.
It was a productive day in all.
On the way home, I had the idea of going to Waterstones and buying The Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy, which I've always wanted to read. I've never been one for books really. The last book I even attempted to read was Prozac Nation and that was about five years ago. However, with this book, I intended to read a bit of it every day I went to college on the train. A great way to pass the twenty minutes it takes to get to/from town. It's only 180 pages long, but there's others in the "trilogy" and if I like this one then I'll probably buy the others as well.
Later that night, I called Jamie as an idea popped into my head. Since everyone in my class was too busy to help me out with my one minute movie, I decided to ask Jamie if he'd do me a big big favour and come into college on his day off and help me film. I wasn't expecting him to say yes, but I needed to ask anyway. I would of completely understood if he had said no too, but he said yes and I was very thankful of it. I asked him if he'd mind coming in at 1pm and he said he was fine with that.
Friday morning was spent in 1/13, the room which I hate. I spent the time in there working on an Illustrator poster for Tony. However, while I had a nice idea for it, I got stuck and though I tried for about twenty minutes to figure it out on my own, I asked Daniel if he had any experience with Illustrator. One of the things I can't stand is when you ask someone for help, but they're just as clueless as you are, yet they act as if they've still got an idea...which he didn't. He just kept clicking on things which had no relation to my problem at all. It was obvious he didn't know anything about Illustrator. It was only after about 10 minutes of clicking on random stuff that he gave in.
I tried for a little while longer, but gave up as well, planning to find Brian in the afternoon instead who's main skill is in Illustrator.
At lunch, I went the library and picked out a book on colour theory, just for something to do. I didn't want to read HGTTG because I wanted that to be specifically for the train journey to/from college. I'd only been reading the colour theory book for a few minutes when Jamie appeared. I thanked him again for coming in. We both went to find Stan and then the three of us went to go get something to eat.
At 1pm, Stan went back to lesson, while Jamie came to my class. It was quite nice having one of my mates in class with me, as I'm so used to sitting there on my own without anyone to talk to who I actually enjoy talking to. When Daniel came in, he turned to Jamie. "Uh...hi?", he said to him, confused, but I explained that he was going to help me out with my filming. I had already booked out the camera earlier in the day and after a while, went to the technician's room to get it and set it up.
I showed Jamie the stuff I'd been doing with Dylan and he thought Dylan looked perfect for the part, which he was, but Dylan was too busy to help me do it all, which is why I had called in Jamie as a replacement.
Dylan talked to Jamie while I was setting the cam up, saying how his shades were cool. When Jamie put them on, he looked just as good as Dylan had looked. I think sunglasses have the ability to make anyone look good.
The filming was fairly straight forward for the first half, since I'd done it twice now already with both Sean and Dylan. Jamie was easy to work with, following my directions with hardly any hiccups and when there were complications it was only because I'd messed the shot up, which was corrected with a second or third take.
The second half of the filming was a little bit more difficult, as I hadn't filmed this part before. The first half had all been in college, the second part was from college to FACT, which is a cinema-but-not-quite building 10 minutes walk away.
Of note is the fact that everyone was planning to go out to the pub and I had invited Alice along the night before. She said she'd let me know by calling me in the afternoon. We had planned to go and see Closer at the cinema together, before heading up to AJ's to meet everyone else. She didn't call me, so I text her and then she did. Sadly, she said she couldn't come, which I was disappointed about, but there's always another time.
While heading to film, Jamie asked if I was still coming the pub and I said yes, although I wasn't particularly bothered about it really. He said that instead of me going home, I could come back to his and then go the pub with him and Mike. I said ok.
The filming got underway. A lot of it was improvised, even though you're supposed to make a storyboard up first and then use that to work off. I don't see the point in that though, as I think you get ideas on the go, rather than looking at a piece of paper.
My hands were absolutely frozen by the time I'd finished filming. I was very pleased with what I had filmed though. We headed back to college, by which time it was 3pm and I uploaded my video to begin editing it. Editing is pretty quick, once you know how to upload the video. Jamie sat in class till around 3:30pm and Mike arrived soon after, at which point Stan came to find us, since he was finished for the day. He, Jamie and Mike went to wait in reception for me to finish at 4pm. I didn't get all of my editing done, but it was going well until I realised that two shots didn't look good at all and that I'd have to either shoot them again or come up with some filler.
At 4pm, I went to go meet Stan, Jamie and Mike in reception. Stan went home, while us three caught the bus to Jamie's. I was absolutely knackered by this point, plus my stomach was hurting. I closed my eyes on the bus, trying to get a bit of sleep, but that's impossible to do.
After about 25 minutes on the bus and a few minutes walk, we got to Jamie's, where me and Mike waited for him to get changed and then we proceeded onto Jamie's Dad's were he dropped some stuff off. I then got some food, the three of us went to Mikes and then we caught the bus back to town and walked up to AJ's where Dave was waiting on his own and had been for the last hour or two.
I wasn't really in the mood for drinking, or even being there at all. We went to go sit down and then me and Jamie played two rounds of pool. I won both, which is pretty damn unusual for me. I also won the game I had against Dave.
Stan arrived after a while and then a while later, so did everyone else and by everyone else, I mean everyone. This was like, everyone who everyone else knew!
Everyone seemed to be very much in the mood to get pissed except me, who sat there probably looking out of place in this sea of laughing, happy people. The drink just kept coming for everyone, since people were offering to buy others drinks. I took pictures throughout the night, which you can see in the archive, but the best pic of the night and quite possible the best picture I've ever taken of a group of people was this one. How cool is that pic? Click here for the same shot, but with names.
Danielle and Mandy said they were leaving at 10pm and I decided that I would too. Stan and Dave walked down with us too. Dave had bought a new long leather jacket which I asked if I could try on. He took a
I got home without no troubles. I came online for a bit, before going to bed at 1:30am and slept till 6pm yesterday. Around 3am, I loaded up Photoshop and started more work on my CD project which I finished around 8am. All parts of the project are now complete. I just have to print them off in college. Seven projects is now six.
I still have to do a DVD cover, Mini DV cover and a book or magazine cover for Brian.
I'm hoping that I'll have the DVD cover done by Monday night. The movie will be complete by the end of Tuesday. The DVD cover and book/mag cover will be done by Wednesday. The animation will be done by Thursday afternoon.
Somewhere in all of that, I have to also put it all together in a Powerpoint presentation. That will probably be done on Thursday, 1pm - 3:30pm, at which point the presentations start.
I'm still about 90% confident I can get it all completed in time. I hope I'm not being too confident about that.
Also, I've made it a point not to show any of the people in my class any of my work. None of them have seen any of my final pieces. This is partly due to the fact that there haven't been any to look at for a few weeks anyway, but now there is, they're still not seeing until the presentation. I'm hoping that they don't see it as some sort of big anti-climax. I freely admit that I like to impress and me not showing them my half finished work adds to that. I guess I'm hoping I get a good reaction from the group as a whole, but I'm not bothered about them as much as I am about my tutors liking it and marking it well. Personally, while I think my end products will be good, I'll lose a lot of marks for showing no sketches or noting where any of my ideas came from, along with not using any 'experimental approaches'. These are things I must remember to do in my next project.
My head hurts.
