OUIL504: Evaluation

I chose A Midsummer Night’s Dream because I love the magical atmosphere in it, I thought that this allowed for a lot of creative freedom within my prints and my animated stings. I also thought the themes of opposites, contrasts and symmetry would work really well in my lino prints, especially as I decided to create them in a renaissance surface pattern style. I have learnt many new skills and developed existing skills throughout this brief. The workload has been overwhelming at times but I think I have consistently been improving my time management and organisational skills in order to hit deadlines with a standard of work I am proud of even though it may not be perfect.

My sketchbooks were incredibly useful in this project and I loved creating them. It enforced my focus on the beautiful details and intricacies which were elements I was looking for in my author research as I knew I needed to find a play that meant I could capitalise on these aspects. I think the atmosphere and themes of A Midsummer Night's Dream appealed to me because of my love of drawing human interaction and emotions. Shakespeare's renaissance era meant a whole new focus on the human condition.  

Lino printing was something I really enjoyed in this project. I love the tactile element when cutting out and mark-making into the lino itself. I also loved the experimental side of the printing process, particularly combining chosen colours with density and opacity of ink. Deciding to create 6 prints instead of 10 meant that I was able to put a lot of care and effort in to designing and creating my lino prints. I also found it a lot easier on my final lino cuts than my practice ones as I invested in a better quality lino and bought my own tools which meant it was easier to cut into and gave me time over Christmas to use my own tools to get to grips with the cutting and mark making process.

I found it really easy to get stuck in to the research for this project as I love literature and I picked the playwright William Shakespeare. His plays capture my imagination completely and led me to stream line my project; to plays and then specifically to A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

A huge weakness in this project was being unable to produce the quantity of work I would have liked. This was because I found myself overwhelmed by the choice of the tangible and intangible in all four plays. I found it hard at first to translate visually; overloaded with the content within the plays, I found it difficult to get stuck in. However the exercises exploring these two elements really helped me to understand image making and put simply the process of capturing the atmosphere of a book or a play. I learnt how combining the tangible and intangible in a drawing can create more depth and meaning, also allowing you to communicate a complex meaning in a simple image. This was a point in the project where I began to understand how I could go about capturing the atmosphere of Shakespeare’s plays. However even after highlighting concurrent themes, symbols and motifs that were evidenced in all four plays I still felt overwhelmed but after discussing this issue with my tutor, I decided to focus purely on one of the plays; A Midsummer Night’s Dream. This immediately made me see the project a lot more clearly yet I was still stuck for how to translate all the genius of the play into 5-10 prints and 3-6 10second stings.

Learning and developing new skills such as those on After Effects and Dragonframe has really opened my eyes to how I can capitalise on my creative work. There are so many ways of creating animations and this brief gave us a great insight on the ways we can manipulate our own work with effects and programmes, saving us time or producing something we never thought possible; to a degree of professionalism. I am happy with my dedication and my illustrated frames for my animation. However I would have loved to have created them in a bolder media such as paint. I also would have thought about the title sequence more thoroughly in order to create one flowing and succinct animation. Next time I will definitely capitalise on programmes such as After Effects to use more collages and layers. I think the music I have chosen really helps to tie the animation together and convey the themes of the play/illustrations.

I made sure to try to attend all parts of this module as I found the peer group sessions, tutor one on ones and taught sessions, such as the tangible and intangible introduction session extremely beneficial to my project. They really helped me stay on track and narrow down the huge task of transforming Shakespeare’s work into 6 prints and 3 10 second stings. I think I contributed to the group well; most likely because I was incredibly interested in my peer’s projects and how we were all going about responding to the brief in such a diverse way. It was extremely useful to get their feedback as it was hard to see this project with fresh eyes after being submerged within it for so long.

I was extremely motivated to this project because I knew that if I let it slip at all I would be unable to finish the products to my expectations. My motivation was also speared on by my love of the literature that I was attempting to transform to print and animation. I really wanted to do it justice and although I am not sure this is possible, I know that I gave it 100% effort. My commitment to creating so many frames was purely in order for the animation to be as intricate and carefully crafted as the play itself. I wanted to ensure I kept a high level of imagery, motifs and symbols within my work as these are devices used powerfully and creatively by Shakespeare to convey meaning and messages within his own work. I also pushed myself to create a large quantity of high quality prints. I had to narrow down the amount I intended to create as I realised I could put more effort into creating dynamic work if I had a smaller amount to work on. I am really happy with the end result of my prints and I still think I managed a high level of quantity and quality with them.