An idea that I came up with shortly after receiving the brief which is just a simple sketch of what I first imagined I might look like spliced with a boar. A few drawings to show some of the body parts including the hoof which is intended to be the hand and an fusion of the boars tail with the human tail bone to make a slightly hairless tail.
4 comments:
Anatomy: Interim Online Review 05/10/2010
Hey Michael,
Your blog represents everything I hate in a CGAA first year…. (Don’t worry, I’ve got some positive stuff to say too!). Seriously, where to begin; firstly, the majority of this work arrived on your blog yesterday, which is to entirely miss the point and advantage of living in the 21st century, wherein it’s possible to share your creative work with a community of like-minded people 24/7. Many of your classmates have been swapping ideas and giving feedback on each other’s progress for a couple of weeks now; many have benefited from comments from myself, Simon Holland and CG graduates. You haven’t, because you haven’t been organized or bothered enough to archive your work on a daily basis and participate. Stupid.
Then, when finally you DO upload, you post barely intelligible photographs (probably from some crappy phone camera) which a) can’t be viewed, and b) make your work look as if it’s been fished out the river.
This always amazes me; I assume you one day want to be taken seriously as a creative force to be reckoned with? Then why present your own work in so slipshod a way? Everything you do, everything you produce is an advertisement for you now; that includes the things you say, the things you write, and the things you produce. Some point very soon, your blog will be a shop window for your creative life, into which potential employers and work placement guys are going to be looking…
Film reviews?
Of course, the reason I’m venting my frustration so nakedly is because the quality of your drawings impresses; I love the cubist life-drawing, and those sketchbook pages (I can just about make them out) have a real vigor and energy too them. You seem to be approaching your boar-splice from a suitably ‘logical’ inside-to-outside manner and you appear to be engaging with your Photoshop classes.
Your instincts re. your essay question serve you well; picking one creature element from a game is not enough of proposition for a 1,500 word written assignment. That said, the idea of parasitic lifeforms taking on human form is not a new or original anxiety; there are a number of stories/films etc. that have a similar starting point. The real question is why do these stories appeal? What are they ‘about’? (In the same way that Cronenberg’s The Fly was ‘about’ sickness and the human fear of bodily deterioration and private fluids). The cultural symbol of the werewolf, of course , is as potent as ever – but why? Your 1,500 words should be about the why, and your research should centre on this question. Listing werewolves is one thing, explaining their reoccurrence is another.
If this blog sends a message, it’s this: ‘I’m not serious about my studies yet.’ I don’t think for one minute that this is true of you, but it is true of you at this moment. My message to you at this earliest stage is as loud and clear; ‘This isn’t good enough for CGAA at UCA’.
Visit 2nd year Leo Tsang’s unit 1 blog from last year for an example of what a great ‘creative development’ blog can look like; the brief was a little different then, but the expectation of what a student can produce in 5 weeks was not. Take the time to work backwards through his posts. I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions. Put simply, however, you need to follow his example. This is what a creative project at degree level looks like…
http://ltsang.blogspot.com/2009/10/final-portrait.html
@tutorphil
From an outsider, looking-in...
At some 710+ words, you have no doubt made your early frustrations abundantly clear to Michael (and the rest of your students) of that I'm sure. However, in my honest opinion this post represents nothing more than a very public, humiliating and unprofessional 'dressing down' from someone acting from a position of trust, responsibility and authority, however well intentioned your comments might be.
From a personal perspective, therein lies the problem; your post represents everyting I hate about the very two-dimensional nature of 21st Century communications... if abused it undermines our ability to interact with each other on a more positive and constructive footing, don't you think?
Knowing Michael as I do, I'm sure he'll take onboard your comments and turn the negatives into positives...perhaps not as quickly as others but he'll get there of that I'm certain.
I would suggest a one-to-one would have been a far more effective and positive way in which to communicate your early frustrations.
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