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Before the fair we had a one on one critique of each other's projects. The crit consisted mostly of a brief explanation about the work and the research in order to understand what the autor was trying to convey followed by a presentation of person's final outcomes. I would then use 6 questions as a guideline to avaluate how sucessful the project was.

When avaluating my work I was lucky that ot was someone who was already kind of familiar with the concepts of tarot and future reading, this was the biggest complaint about my work actually. Should the person not know of the concept or the inner narratives of tarot they will have to rely on my explanation in order to understand my publication. One way to solve this problem is develop a consize speech about tarot so people can get the jist of it in under a minute and get them to look up more for themselves. One other way would be to minimize the tarot aspects and focus on the comic book form of storytelling. However, this may be a simple case of targeting a niche demographic, after all, not every work needs to appeal to the masses. Another point which I got hung up on was the price, when deciding an overall price I aimed to break even and that took a lot of courage out of me, but if I really want to exercise courage I need to aim higher and really place the real value of my own work. This fear also made me afraid to invest in the work and print the cards on a better paper, which, in turn, kills my work's ability to sell. Next time I will try to plan a budget and really try to invest in my work, not only in terms of work and time, but also in real money.

As for the compliments it was really interesting to notice just how much research and experiementation I actually did. In the rush of the action most research flew by like it was nothing, but when stepping back and looking at I ended up looking through many primary and secondary sources in order tp fully understand the concepts of tarot and comic book art.

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Today was a simple finish what you have to finish before the fair tomorrow. Since I  was already done I decided to use the rest of the time to design a new box that was more presentable and useful. i started by redoing my first design, which was very functional, but not very slick and way too big. I slimmed down the box to half of the width and added flaps to the design, I then cut out every model at the same time in order to ensure that some boxes wouldnt be different than the next. I then painted the boxes velvet blue and glued them with flawless sucess.

During the painting process I used spray paint which made the work much fast, but had the draw back of being a bit too wide and ended up painting some unintended places, like the inside of the box. It would also be wise to paint with the structure before folding and gluing it, since I had to keep rotating it around while painting since I couldnt cover all of it at once.

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For the last part in my self publishing process I had to build the boxes in which the deck would be stored. Since I had 110 cards I would have 5 decks and have to do 5 deck boxes, though I am going to end up doing more just in case. I already had sketched out and made a mock deckbox a few days ago, but I decided to incorporate a more slick design. I originaly had planed to do it a blue cardboard paper and then print a black decal around it, but to to the time constraints I decided to simply paint it in a velvet blue. Luckily there was just the right shade of blue in the nearby store, but I shouldnt rely on luck and convienince on further projects.

While following my own instruction I started to discover quite the lot of problems, there were no flaps to glue each side of the box, the top of the box wasnt wide enough and wouldnt close, the bottom part was too small and would leave a space between it and the top part of the box. Anyhow, there were many improvements to be made, so I designed a second box design. This was still flawed in both execution, as I hastly cut it out and glued it together, as well as design, since some of the problems, like the width of the top, were still present. With the deadline being tomorrow afternoon. I didnt have the luxury of trying out a new design so I simply did 6 copies of this one and if I felt I had enough time tomorrow I would design a new box.

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Today it was probably the most boring step of the entire process, printing the illustrations, cutting them out and then gluing it to the prints from yesterday. The printing process, which usually takes a long time, was surprisingly smoothly and wasnt nearly as costly as I had thought. I had the option of printing either here or in a professional printer and the diference in cost was staggering, in ebac all of my prints would cost a little over R$ 5, while the latter would go for around 50. Since my goal with this project was selling something that I was proud of and that I thought it was worth money I had to pick the best printing quality.

With the prints in hand I made my first big mistake, I decided to cut them in the guillotine. Since the printers dont have a solid ruler for the paper each prints ends up being slightly rotated and when you put that in a precise machine the results are less than pleasing. This was a case where cutting it by hand, which I later did with the few prints that I didnt cut in the machine, resulted in a much more natural and precise cut.

The last step of the process was to glue each picture individualy to the respective print. This process was incredibly dull and manual, but it did allow me to fix some of the mistakes in the previous step, it did, however, highlight a failure in my action plan. Previously I was going to use the method of pressing the glued material so it would be smooth solid, but since I was going to use it on two sheets of paper the option of using the press was impossible as it would ruin both sides due to the pressure. This means I had to rely on a regular glue for my project and it was a very frustrating experience overall. It, once again, highlights the importance of researching every step in your action plan before actualing going through with it.

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Since I didnt have time to print the back of the cards on friday I decided to use the day for doing just that. Today would mark the biggest risk of my project, since I would make 6 decks I would need 132 small paper pieces, which would be over 10 A2 blue paper sheets, which is not only a monetary liability, but also an environmental one. My original plan was to make 10 copies which is 220 pieces, but to combat thaat I reduced it to just 6, it is still a risk, but the loss wouldnt be so great should the project not work during printing or even conceptually. Following last classes bad luck streak I had a ton of problems during print making which were most related to an unfamiliarity with the printing process itself. In short words, I acidentally printed the pattern in the wrong place and started getting desperate and that led to me trying to fix the mistake, but accidentaly having to through away almost 20 pieces of paper which were unusable prints. After asking the nearby tutor help to clean up and start the printing process from the beginning I was able to get a better hold of the situation, things would still go sour, like paint drying and paper getting stuck on the screen, but I was able to acess the situation and deal with it effectively.

After that it was the 1st trimming step, I would get all of my prints and trim them in the guilliotine so they all would have the same dimension. The biggest problem when doing this is that for the first 30 or so prints I didnt establish a specific register for printing, so each copy was either slightly rotated or out of place, so when they were trimmed there were some slight deviations. Since there were so many mistakes I was limited to making 5 copies and each deck instead of 6

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Now that I had almost all images drawn with pencil I still had to scan them and then paint over it before scanning again. My idea for the illustrations is one layer of pencil over one layer of just paint, not only is that easier to work with on photoshop, but it also looks much mpre uncontrolled since you cant just fill the gaps in the drawing with paint. That is also how I think the comic I am using for reference was made, mostly due to the fact that the inking of the paper seems to have been added digitally over the normal colors, but that could just be standart prpccedure for any comic book nowadays.
For the color pallet I took once again inspiration from the Iron Fist: Living Weapon comic book and how every page had a set color pallet depending on the impact, mood or environment. That kind of macrothinking is quite impresive since I am used to think of each panel as it's own beast and not too much of them working as a set or a page.

For the paint I used gouache, I was thinking of using watercolor, but the nature of that paint goes against the whole concept of tarot. Tarot is about archetypes, solid colors, big statements in simple words, meanwhile watercolor is about softness and playing with the light, if often uses gradients and many color tones to illustrate the richness in every scene. In a production standpoint, gouache would also be much faster to work with, since I would be able to mix colors faster, wouldnt have to wait as much for it to dry, wouldnt have to use more than one layer for most scenes.

Unfortunately I only managed to completly drawn, paint and edit 8 images, however, now that I understand the production cycle I feel like I can finish the pther 14 illustrations .tomorrow

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Following my action plan, I had these two days dedicated to drawing and painting all the illustrations. Since I have problems with drawing people I called a friend over to help me as a rotoscope model. I already had a storyboard for each scene, which helped me a lot when during the photograph and the drawing process because I had instant acess to each and every scene at an eye's glance. With it in hand I guided I immitate the character's poses in every shot. One thing that I realized while shooting the pictures is how stale some of the shots were, most of them were either a direct side view or involved the character in a pondering state, so I stopped the photo shoot for a bit in order to mix up somethings in the story board. Unfortunatly, due to this adjustments, we didnt have time to finish every pose, so the Magician and strength arcana will have to be drawn by hand.

When actually rotoscoping the pictures I noticed how much faster it is to draw human shapes usign that rather than simply using reference. The diference between the cards that were rotoscoped and hard drawn is night and day, the roroscoped drawing have life and motion, while the latter is stale and puppet like. Aside from that, it was surprising how unnatural poses can look in paper, but completly normal in real life. It goes to show that we are so used to the human body as a certain sillouete that when we change the angle or the pose it can look quite uncanny. It was even funny because in order to make some poses look more accurate I had to make them less accurate.

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With the first day focusing entirerly on production I followed my action plan and started by screen printing the back of the cards. My original plan was to make the screen for screen printing and then try to print as many as I could. There were quite a lot of complication, however. The paper I had cut was too small and the printing would take way too long due to all the setup required to make it work. Another problem came when I tried to make a screen with multiple cards so it wouldnt take as long to actually print, but 2 hours after the tutor told me that it was actually much easier to just print them one by one. Overall, today wasnt very productive, as I could have solved everything in just over an hour or so and went straight into printing, but this wasnt a very drastic setback and I did complete the hardest part, which was production of the actual screen.

After revising my action plan, I decided to use saturday and sunday to finish all the illustrations, since I wouldnt have acess to printing techiniques and it would be much safer to experiement with different paints and brushes in the confort of my own home, while monday would be dedicated to print making and then later cutting the cards. That would leave thursday to printing and gluing the cards and wednesday to make the boxes, so thursay and friday would be free in case any problem arise.

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This was the day of the mid project crit of the self publish project. This crit wasnt focused on outcomes or the physicality of the concept in general, instead it focused more on the idea behind it and why do I want to tell a story or send this message. In preparation for this I read a bit about the Fool's Journey and used it as a guideline for a story about a boy stumbling through life before finding his place in the world. I was mostly inspired by how the Persona series uses each arcana as an archetype for a story, however, instead of putting the spotlight on these characters I want to clearly tell the story of the protagonist and his outlook on life.

This was mostly a reflection of my own feelings and journey when I decided that I wanted to be a game designer instead of a paleontologist. I was stumbling thrpugh life and got a period of deconstrunction of the self before I got inspired by Mobile Suit Gundam and was sure of what I wanted and, dare I say, needed to do.

As for feedback I didnt get many complaints aside from this being a topic that has been talked about by many people already. However, due to the nature of tarot, each person is going interpret and express thselves in vastly different ways and I am trying to present it in a way that is, at least, not as common as others. I also got some references for this project, Alejandro Jodoworsky, who wrote "The Way of the Tarot" and also a friend of mine from the current BA whoese final project was about the interpretation of tarot.

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Today's activities were a photoshop workshop and a discussion meant to help us develop the narrative of our publication. The workshop overall was very basic and didnt teach much beyond what I already know. There were some cool tricks, like making a colored effect by unaligning the color channels, but that wont be vey useful in this current project. I did, however, get time experiement with my sketches on photoshop and now I know that I should do as much as I can on paper before putting it on photoshop. The color effects just looked way to rigid and well distributed, there was no flow of tones, just one solid and lifeless color. I will probably sketch the drawing as one layer and paint the painting as another and then put them together on photoshop.

When it comes to the discussion to develop our ideas again it didnt prove very useful. To it's credit, I did realize that I hadnt thought much about the characters themselves, but when thinking about it I alao realized that my story is much more about style and visuals tham it is about narrative. The characters are vessels for the ideas I want to present and serve no purpose other than that.

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The first part of today's class was dedicated to developing more ideas for the zine fair. In the exercise we had to write down 30 ideas in 30 minutes and then discuss with our peers about possible ways to reuse or combine each other's ideas. I tried to do so 1/3 of my ideas would be developing my current plan of using the arcanas, 1/3 would be for some kind of moving image, so an animation or a short and the last third would be to other illustrated zines. I wasnt to keen on this exercise since I already got a pretty solid idea, so this was a compromise between trying new things and developing my idea. As for good ideas that came from this exercise, I had a couple of them that I would like to do, like the Dark Magician documentary or the stop motion gundam fight, but that is honestly just not what I want to do for this zine project, even though they would have more to do with my digital animation pathway.

The second part of the class was a lecture with Jaygo Bloom from the Illustration and Graphic Design pathway. There were some interesting informations in there, like how illustrationdoesnt necesasarily mean drawing and how thing like cosplaying and building props can be a part of that course, however it was clear that Jaygo wasnt trying to build a course for industry practice, which is very much what I look for. However, I do value the aspects of visual communication in things like graphic design and illustration and I wish to study these more in order to enrich my practice in game development

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We started the day with a visit to the dado to have a lecture about the problems that self publish artists commonly face. The first issue was related to artists relationships with galleries, discussing the fear of contracts, problems with displaying your work, renting a venue, making a profit and even storage. I dont think that part was particularly useful for me, as I want to be a game designer and I wont have to face this kind of issues the same way as other artists, furthermore it is hard to apply that knowledge to my current life seeing that I dont see myself making bussiness with a gallery in the next 5 or 10 years. The second part was much more intriguing as it related to artists exposing work on the internet. I wasnt exactly the main audience, as they clearly said that they aimed to reach artist that dont work a lot with the internet, but it was interesting to learn that this particular market was still very undeveloped and that even in 2018 we still see artists unsure or ignorant about the internet as a venue for exposing art. With artists slowly exploring this space more and more I start to wonder if the internet will one day become a place as competitive and expensive as art galleries are nowadays.

When we got back to EBAC we had another lecture with Kevin and some guests from studio Split to serve as an introduction to the digital animation pathway. I was excited during the whole thing, particularly during the highlight of all the different jobs that we can get, from a motion capture artist to a concept artist to a modeler to rotoscop artist, all the possibilities are incredibly exciting. Even though I gravitated more towards enviroment design, since that seems to be a more involved role and one that fully utilizes the possibilities of the gaming medie, I also want to learn just about anything, every process looks interesting and like I could use to improve my game design philosophies as well as understanding the game designing process better. I had a talk with Kevin a few days ago and my interest in every single area of game producing could make me a very good Game Generalist, however I still feel quite unconfortable when thinking that what I do has a name and an especific purpose. What intrigued me about game design overall is how broad it was and how saying that I was a "Game designer" didnt necessarily answered the question of "what do I do", but I understand that in order to find workthe employer needs to know what he is paying you to do.

Another thing that surprised me was the scope of studio split. When thinking about brazilian companies I never think of a big AAA studio that does work with feature lenght films, but their portfolio was incredibly impressive. Seeing them work with brands like Monica's Gang and movies that I have seen in theaters was indeed impressive. I am 100% sure that I want to move to either the US or Japan or Canada when I finish my degree because I want to work in the big leagues and in AAA games, however now I see that as the gaming and animation market expand here in Brazil I could see myself coming back here to work with the latest big brazilian release. I understand how greedy and prideful that may sound, but I refuse to accept anything but the top.

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When thinking on how I want to draw my zine I had to first know of my limitations. Since a zine is something that is usually rough and lack polish I can't exactly make a carefully drawn and very delicate work, that works well with my greatest limitation, my lack of drawing skills that is. When looking through comic book artstyles, since they are what I am trying to replicate, I found the very interesting artstyle of Kaare Andrews, most especifically his work in Iron Fist: Living Weapon. He uses very rough and very strong lines to form beautiful and imnpactful artwork that adds pain and strenght to each scene. He also has a very interesting work with color, limiting himself to an especific color palette for each page.  That gives each scene a sense of intensity and passion, even quiet moments like Iron Fist talking with his wife.

As an update to the Exodia project, I accidentaly cut out the positive instead of the negative. I tried to fix the mistake by putting paint over positives, but the paint was way too thin and let light go through it. Even if I put another layer on top of it it wouldnt have work since the paint would have been ripped clean off when removing the rest of the red layer from the paper matrix. In short words, I will, most likely have to redo all of my work, but that will serve as an example to always make sure what I need to remove before actually start removing it.

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The next big project will be for the yearly Zine fair in EBAC and it must be a self published publication. That could be either a Zine or a video, but the essence of the project is that it must be rough and easily reproducible, so we will have to use cheap and practical techiniques like photocopying. My biggest problem with this project is that we will have the opportunity to sell our publications to potential viewers. As much as I appreciate my own work for research and as proof of my growth as an artist I would still be hardpressed to say that it is worth any money, especially someone else's money. That is my biggest objective with this whole project, I want to make a product that I can price and proudly sell. I dont intend on making a profit or even breaking even, all I want is to finally be able to put a price of what my work is worth and have someone actually buying it.

As for themes I was going to work with robots because that is a subject I could write a whole essay about, but I want to brench out a bit and try do something with the concepts of Tarot. Last year I tried to apply it to my page about Destiny in the EBAC ABC, but I ended up dropping the subject entirely in favor of something that was easier to read. The way the Persona series uses tarot as metaphores for the human psyche and also as a basis for storytelling is genius and got me hooked in a subject that I usually rolled my eyes when hearing about it. For a more concrete idea, I wanted to layer the book in a way that each page is one of the 21 main Arcanas, that allows me to make a super well designed page that actually looks like a tarot card. Along with that I want to also introduce a theme of comic book and sequential image storytelling, with each tarot card being like a panel in a comic book. I need to sketch out how it would look like, but if the plan is solid I will have the opportunity to combine two of my favorite subjects and truly bring that passion that I talked about on previous entries of this journal.

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For the second project of my self directed study I wanted to revisit a technique that I havent explored in over 6 months, print screening with a screen matrix. Much like screen printing itself, the preparation was what required the most work and thought instead of the execution. I already had an idea that I wanted to translate to a screen printed media, the five pieces of exodia. Those are 5 card of the card game, Yu Gi Oh, that when brought together make an unbeatable monster. The idea is to make 5 matrixes of each of the exodia pieces and print them onto shirts so each person can have a piece. The challanges I would have to face is, first, translating the complex design of the cards into something that works with just one single shaded color and also plan a path the requires the least ammount of work, that means learning to reuse assets in order to speed up this usually lenghty process.

First thing I had to do is redesigning the card, I used some t-shirt designs as inspiration and how they deal with complex shapes. What I saw that was impressive is how you can fracture the drawing in order to add shadow, but our brains dont process the image as being fractured, but as a complete being. I then used the card itself as reference for the typography, that was mostly a 1 to 1 copy of the image, but during it I noticed that I could reuse the same drawing in all of the exodia designs since all the 5 card display the text "ATK/   200 DEF/    300".

Currently I didnt have time to finish this project as actually cutting out the design in order to make the matrix can be quite the time sink, but I will try and finish it by next week, or at least a prototype of it.

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With thursday and friday being self directed study days I wanted to experiement with familiar themes, but in ways that would get me out of my confort zone. This is to help me branch out and understand how you can represent themes and ideas in many different ways as well as helping me focus on the technique itself instead of developing the message.

For the first experiement I wanted to challange the scale of my drawing by making a huge drawing of one of my favorite robot design, Barbatos Lupus, on the wall of the stairway. Since we were already invited to draw there there wouldnt be the need of asking permission or worrying about a certain level of polish. As for the design, I simply chose something close to heart so people would immediatly identify me as the author. I used charcoal in order to sketch on the wall the proportions, it was really easy to wash out in case I made some mistake and, most importantly, it helped drawing in such an unneven surface like a wall. The only downside when using charcoal is that it doesnt stick to a surface too much, so if you accidently rest your hand over a drawn line it can cause quite the mess. After having difficulties mainting the proportion between limbs and such I tried to first sketch the drawing in my drawing diary. That helped me a lot when it came to eyeballing the proportions, but actually paying attention to the size and distance to things relative to each other is, unsurprisingly, much more helpful.

Though I would want to redo the drawing, due to some parts being vastly diferent from the reference image, I wouldnt call it a failure since I was able to draw a very complex and detailed shape onto an unneven and unnusual surface. One way to improve the drawing would be introducing a bit of colour into the mix, not like a gouache, but a more messy and street like style that can be achieved with spray paint. This helps compliments the overall messy and sharp design that is quite agressive in nature.

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The progress tutorial has finally come and it was a thorough analysis of my progress, achievments and failures during the first stage of the course. I didnt have much of a selection process as even the failures or the projects I didnt particularly liked needed to be seen. When actually presenting the projects I tried to put them in chronological order and spreding the work out so it would be easier to show to my work to the tutor and I wouldnt have to keep going back and forth around the desks. It worked pretty fine, but I should have placed all the photos near their respective projects instead of making a "Photograph pile".

The first piece of feedback really put me on the spot, when showing the final results of my 3D character I had taken a picture of the letter itself, but completly forgot to take a picture of the instalation itself, as in the objects I used to project the shadow and where I placed the projector. What really made me think is that the instalation itself was even more important than just the final piece as it showed resourcefulnes and creativity. Until now I was way too focus in showing the final outcome and treating it as the utmost important thing, but the process itself eclipses that by a mile and is something that must be recorded and treasured. Tomorrow I'll photograph the space as I should have done a long time ago.

Another thing that I took notice was the overall lack of refinement in my work. This isnt something that affects the first part of the course as much, as it was designed for quick experiementations and outcomes, but as projects get deeper and more complex I need to assign some time for looking at what I have done and work one the details and the overall presentation. That was something that was really hard for me in the past, as working 1 hour and 7 hours would yield the same results, but as my skill ceiling increases I can make much better use of those extre refinement hours. Developing this is my prime objective during this year.

My weakest point during the whole analysis was my research. Now, there is definitely work to be done while researching, I need to visit even more sources, especially primary sources such as expositions and galleries since I have only got a couple of them so far. However, my biggest problem was not knowing how to use the research file, first: whatever reflection I did about my research was in the reflective journal and not in the research file, that was a really easy fix, just copy and paste the reflection in both places; second: only having links and sources about things that relate to imediate projects, so whenever I saw that inspired me or that I though could be useful I would put on the reflective journal but not in the research file, since it didnt have anything to do with the current projects. So I will have to update my research file with all the info I have in my reflective journal and in my personal folders of important sources. If  I took anything away from this is that the research file is a much more flexible tool than I once though.

Some small things to work with are: drawing more observational drawings during the planning stage of a project, take better care of the sketchbook, so using the top coat and writing titles whenever I switch from one project to another and trying to move away from the "Mecha" theme so I can explore things I am not familiar with. Last, but not least, I should always look to my typography work before starting a new project so I can understand how much better a work can be when there is passion and fun behind it. I shouldnt be afraid of taking my time and getting close to the deadline if it mean that I will develop an idea that I will be proud of and happy to work with, worst comes to worst, that process alone speaks volumes, far more than a disheartend final piece.

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After the unappealing results of yesterday's color tests I was hardpressed to find a better color palette that also would work well with my concept of the blue and red sword. I was then reminded of a video about how Spider-Man Homecoming uses color to both enhance the story telling and stand out from other blockbuster movies. The video introduces the idea of a color palette and how blockbuster movies use it to make movies more appealing. In short, when colors opposite in the color wheel are together it looks pleasing to the eye. But the really interesting part is when he talks about the use of the very saturated red, green and purple. In movies the two most prominent colors are orange and teal, so when you introduce that bold red it looks different, it catches your attention instantly. That is a method of dialogue free story telling, a concept that intrigues me to no end and is in part why I love videogames so much, but it's very much present in movies as well.

Going back to my 3D project, I know that the robot armor is red, so a good compliment for it is to use green. The eyes the inner frame could be good places to put it since the green would look more secondary to the red. I would also try to use a darker shade of green, as to look almost like a dark grey, since this is a robot after all. The blue, however would probably be very bright as to work in contrast with the more dark tones of red and green. The mystery of this blue light would give a sense of mystic to the robot just as much as it gave the sword. I should also make sure the colors are well distributed, I dont want them to feel too far apart, as it would divide the attention of the viewer and I dont want them to be too mashed together, as it would be quite confusing.

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How SPIDER-MAN Homecoming Uses Color to Break Movie Tropes || NerdSync

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Today I finished the 3D Photography that we started last thursday. As I explained before, I used a stack of papers, glued them and then cut the sillouete of a robot I had taken a picture. I used papers as the material because it's very soft and would make it easier to cut out with a modeling knife. The final sillouete had 5 layers of paper, I could then cut one layer of a certain part of the drawing to play with the idea of depth, I used both the picture and the 3D model I have of the robot as reference for which parts should have more layers, which should have less and so on. During this process I found the first problem with my process, the glue I used made it really hard to remove the layers and sometimes left a undesirable texture that clashed with the smoothnes of the other layers. If I had to guess why that happened it would be either the paper being too frail or the glue not being dry.

After getting all the depth just right I moved on to the painting stage. Originaly I wasnt going to paint, but an entirely white sillouete made it hard to notice the cut out detail as the different layers. Instead of using the default color scheme I sketched out my own color palette besed on the red and blue sword from the game Xenoblade Chronicles. The sword already had a very mechanical design and the concept of a sword that bends destiny itself is very fitting with a robot called "Destiny Gundam". The final result was very underwhelming and dull, however. The slickness of the strick red and cyan for the sword worked because of it's simple design. In a robot with all sorts of gears and blades and vents the monotone asthectic just makes it hard to appreciate the detail. Though if I had managed to add more tones of each color and maybe show more of the gray and dark brown inner frame it would have looked more pleasing to the eye as it would have made it easier to see all the mechanical parts

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While experiementing with different techiniques for my faily drawing I got some things to think about when using pastels and collage. The first drawing I did was a collage to emulate the "minimalist" wallpapers you see shared online. I got a piece of paper and painted it gold since I havent found a tone of yellow that describes gold really well. Since the paper was white and the robot was mostly white, I only cut out the golden parts and glued them onto the paper. I was scared that the minal ammount of detail would make it hard to make out what that was, but the result was pretty solid, though if I had also cut out the grey details  would have made it easier to get a clean picture for those not familiar with the design of the robot.
The second drawing used oil pastel and followed a same structure as the previous drawing, I used pastels on the golden and grey details, but left the white parts untouched. This time, however, I used a marker to draw the outline of the robot so it's shape would be clearer. The result was quite dissapointing, the fluidness of the drawing and the neatness of the colours dont mix well with the solid black marker that makes up the division between colors. Since the result was already subpair I also decided to experiement with the background and make a painting using a colour that would have clashed with the black and gold pastels, red. Another mistake on my part as the background screams way too much and makes the drawing loose shape and focus. One better option would have been to use a teal or light blue colour, since it is directly opposite to yellow in the colour wheel and, therefore, looks much more pleasing to the eye when in conjunction with the yellow/orange pastels.

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The recommended video about creativity and procrastinating was very eye opening when it comes to the way I handle tasks and deadlines. The video introduces the concept of a pre-crastinator, as in someone who is anxious to finish a project and finishes it way ahead of the deadline. I can confidently put myself into that group, I dont like taking too many risks when it comes to work and missing a deadline is as scary as death itself, however, that is not the path to being creative. The video points out that finishing things way too early doesnt give you enough time to think about new ideas or develop the ones you have, on the other hand, people who do things way to late have to rush out things without thinking or reflecting. There is a supposed sweetspot when it comes to procrastinating, when you have that task on your mind, but you take your time and let ideas and reflections build in.

This has a lot do with my recent reflection on practice vs research and how it's a continuous thing that should be in the back of your mind at all times. You experiement, you read something, you procastinate, all of these things are important steps in the creative process. So if there is something I should try to work on this year is to take my time with each project and not to be scared to finish close to the deadline.

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Transcript of "The surprising habits of original thinkers"

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TED Talk Subtitles and Transcript: How do creative people come up with great ideas? Organizational psychologist Adam Grant studies "originals": thinkers who dream up new ideas and take action to put them into the world. In this talk, learn three unexpected habits of originals -- including embracing failure.

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With the end of the photography project we had to do a 3D work using one of the pictures. Because of the workshops I didnt have enough time to complete the product, so the final result was quite rough, it only had 1 layer out of 8 and I didnt have time to glue the layers. I wanted to play with depth and make a paper model of one of my robots, since that was one of my favorite pictures and I also have a lot of passion with that subject because of my history of collecting and modeling robots, that proved to not be so wise for this deadline since even with the extra 1 hour I dont think I would have found the time to complete it. So the results are inconclusive, but I should be able to finish and asses it by the end of the weekend.

When considering the overall project I have to say that the lack of time to develop each of this ideas really hurt my final outcomes, I didnt feel there was much room to develop or experiement with the techniques that we recently learned so many of my works were either unfinished, rushed or both, one example would be the 3D paper model. The feedback I received was positive, but I did feel a lack of confidence on my part when presenting the work due to both a lack of foresight, like not printing out pictures with my filters, and the lack of time to finish each project as I said earlier.

The last thing I did today was the reflection/research workshop. In this two one hour session we did quick exercises that developed our reflection/research skills and also helped us understand it's importance. One doubt I always have when doing a project is thinking how much research should I do, I am the kind of person that would love diving into books and movies all day so I can learn everything about a certain subject, but when it comes to work I always feel a pressure to stop researching and start acting. The answer was quite interesting, instead of a simple "try to do both" kind of answer, I realised that these two things shouldnt be treated as different parts of a creative process. Research isnt something you do once and then you are good, it's a constant process that is done all through and during a project, there isnt that appearent divide between acting and researching.

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Continuing with the theme of experiementing with photography we used old pictures to experiement with adding and subtracting elements. The most interesting part is that when thinking of both of these themes I always think of using two or more pictures, but this time we were restricted to a single picture. That allowed me to explore a wider array of techniques that I didnt usually associate with photographs, like paint and ink as well as cutting and then rearranging elements from the same picture. The results were interesting, but definitely not complex or given too much thoughts, but with only 50 min to plan and execute each picture I'd say the results were expected. The only picture I feel I could have worked more was the one that involved stitching, I spent a lot of time planning and not much time executing, that was especially harmful since stitching is a process that is known for taking a while.

One eye opening lesson I got today came from John Berger's "Understanding a photograph". There were two things in particular that stuck with me and are making me rethink my whole view of photography, the first one is the unimportance of composition. As he says, a director or a paintor can completly compose their images, but a photographer enriches the soul by capturing what is already there, what isnt carefully planned to fit a composition. The composition comes from *when* to take a picture, not from the positions of each image component. The second is that what gives meaning to a picture is that "What it shows invokes what is not shown". The art of photographer is the art of capturing a moment you declare relevant, but a more interesting question that arises from that is "What is out of frame?". For a while I treated pictures just as I treated a painting, as something that is aesthetic and needs to be composed, but now I understand that the essence that makes photography an everlasting art is in the moment, in the decision of capturing was is there as it is.

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Today we continued with the development of the camera filter. The first product worked fine, it could take some really good pictures with that filter, but it was very rough, unflexible and quite frankly ugly. For future development I decided to add a modular filter system, so filters would be made in a template manner that is compatible with the main gadget. This would make the cumbersome design have some advantages and allow easier experiementation between filters. The modular system worked was nearly flawless, the only nitpick is that the modular lens could get stuck when trying to plug it in the main holder. However, I wasnt able to improve the presentation all that much. This was mostly because of the material and how frail it was, but if I had used something more rigid, like would, and had acess to a spray paint I am sure the design would have looked much better.

After seeing one of my peers experiement with the same concept of a modular lens I saw how compact and stylish it was and decided to make a more slick design that operates in the same manner. I first designed the blue prints in a way that I would use as little glue/tape as possible, as it would be easier to paint. I did not have enough time to finish it, but the only missing parts is the holder for the lenses, which shouldnt take much time, and the painting, which can be quite the hassle, but I will go for a simpler design.

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With the many pictures we took and selected during last week we had a discussing about how and why we took certain pictures. The thing that stood out the most is that what determines a value of a picture isnt necessarily it's aesthetic appeal, but it's narratives. Many of the "Favorite Photos" had a narrative either withing the picture or outside of it, be it an image of someone dear or an image that was followed by a funny moment. For techniques I did see an abundance of pictures taken by phone instead of using a proper camera. That does point to an interesting development in how pictures are seen in our society, it's more important to get the shot than to get a good picture, we need to have something light and that is near us at all times so when opportunity arises we can quickly capture the moment. Some may see this as a regress in the art of photography, but I do see it as an advance, since it allows us to break free from past shackles from having to wait for the perfect lighting and focus and finally see the world as it really is.

As for the problem we were instructed to solve, we had to use a transparent object to make a filter for a camera. My first thought came from a day where I was walking in the rain and saw my distorted reflection in the window of a passing bus. The rapid moving bus and the caos from the rain drops created quite the mesmerizing image. I tried to replicate it with a piece of fluid transparent plastic since it is easily bendable and pierced so I can create a chaotic and yet controled view that resembles the flowing rain.

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When researching about camera techniques I was very surprised with the simplicity of some of those mechanisms. Firstly is the camera obscura, whose origins are a product of advancements in biology of all things, and it served as the base for the development of all of photography and moving image. Actually, a lot of the techniques we use come from nature, such as the shadow theatre, making it look like animation was something hidding in plane sight.

I do feel that the advancements of today's society make it hard to understand the impact of some of these techiniques though. Even though they played a huge part in the development of civilization and culture as a whole, today they are seen as so simple that even a child could figure out it's inner workings. Though some parts still amaze me, like using a series of mirrors to reverse the image from it's usual upside down state, like in the camera obscura".

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For our next task we must take 60 pictures of mamy different subjects listed on our brief. The selection process for each photo was quite though, it wasnt just about taking a picture with the theme in it, I also had to think about composition, lighting, exposure and many others. These are all elements of a picture and to ignore them is to ignore a part of the piece.

However, I did have problem with t he sheer number of pictures we had to get, I would say that about 1/2 of what I took can be considered "High Quality" and a lot of them had no purpose or intention other than filling the list. Those that did have a little more thought behind it though looked great, especially the one about isolation.

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As the final day of our protest project there were big expectations and I am sorry to admit how awfuly unprepared I was. I had a lot of material to work with, but I spent very little time thinking about how I would present it and how I would actually protest. This was reflected in my feedback, a lot of comments pointed out the blandness of the presentation and how a little bit more thought could have made it more effective.

One thing I noticed when developing my cause is how long the tagline was and how much backstory it needed. I them started polish it and cut as much as possible so all that would be left is the essencials. The final message was "We have Power" and, though very strong, it doesnt point to any especific movement and could be interpreted in many different ways. I do like that each person can have their own call to action and their own empowerment, but it does feel very cheap to leave it this vague.

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Even though today's activities were mostly execution of yesterday's plans, there were still a lot of mistakes to learn from. The biggest mistakes came from the process of printing, especially using stencils. First, I wanted to do a few tests to see how the printing would look like, but because of how frail the stencil itself is I had to commit to it either way. The result looked nice, but because I wasnt prepared to start printing I didnt have a lot of paper on hand. The second stencil was bigger and generated more results, but there were still some problems, especially during the execution. From not putting enough paint, to using too many layers of paint, to accidentaly pulling the roller before it could paint the whole picture. However those are mistakes that are very easy to fix and probably will dissapear with practice and familiarity with the technique. The big problem though is something I must work on, lack of planning has affected me yestarday and has affected me yet again, when doing a project I must think of everything, no matter how small or insignificant it is.

As for decisions, I wanted to use a stencil made print as my final poster, as I trust it more than my collage abilities and also because the flat colors of the print is more eyecatching and easy to read. For the stand for the poster I used a piece of wood and used a stapler to stitch them together. I liked the look of the wood handle, but the poster is very floopy and not very stable. If I had more time I would have used some kind of super glue and also increased the surface area of the poster that is in contact with the piece of wood. I also decided to do a performance for tomorrow's protest, I'll stand with the billboard on hand in front of important places, so people will have to go through me to get what they want. That will be a challenge of power, I want to make them realise that no wall cannot be broken, that they can carve their own future. My only problem is deciding the place, as much as I want to make a good performance I also dont want to be an annoyance for my peers.

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Today really wasnt sucessful, due to a bunch of technical difficulties my process was held back by a long time. I got way to close for confort to the deadline and ended up producing an extremely sub par piece. Because of that I had to waste almost one hour devloping the idea again. The final result was quite nice, but I was very frustrated with my failure. For things that I could have done better to avoid this from happening again, never trust the printer, the moment the printer started acring funky I should have gone back and had a plan of using stencil or drawing. Also, I was creatively limited by my cut outs due to my small library of newspaper and magazines, so I must build a backup catalog of them as soon as possible.

If there is anything I learned today it was how I deal with failure and frustration. I am not sure if this is the best way to approach it, but frustration motivates me more than anything. When my work got held back all I wanted was to make something better and rub it in my tutors face to prove that I can keep up. This is definitely not a healthy mindset for a social life, but for a work life it brings results.

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After reading the first brief I started thinking of themes to base my protest on. Right now I am not leaning towards social-political issues as much as I am in philosophical problems. Discussions centered around philosophical dillemas can enrich a soul and a society, however, there is a barrier that makes those kinds of discussions very hard to understand, especially to the general public. That is going to be my greatest challenge, finding a problem that is both relevant and enlightening as well as managing to present it in a quick and easy to understand way. One way I could do it is by grounding these metaphorical and amorphous dilemmas into reality and explicitly show where they could apply.

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After a week of planning we finally had the crit for out final project. From general observances from other people's work I got particularly impressed by how some people used their environment, a work needs not to be displayed on a pedestal or a desk because it bring the question "Is the desk part of the work?". One example that illustrates this is the S made of soap which was displayed near the school sink, the place where it stood, the background and the things around it were part of the piece. I personally think my project follows this rules, though there could be some improvements. First, there was a chair in the room for easier acess to all the plug, but it also didnt make  lot of sense as a set piece, second, the lockers were very neat and organized, distancing that part of the room from the omnious an messy part. Lastly, the projector itself was just that, a projector, it wasnt incorporated into the room in any way, it simply served to display the piece, much like a pedestal would.

As for feedback, I didnt receive much since we were running short on time, but I do like how despite my efforts to make the room look creepy and unnerving, some people got a sense of levity and nostalgia. One could consider this to be a failure, but I see it as a success, my intention with any work of art shouldnt be to just relay what I am feeling and make people feel the same way, it should make them think about what they are feeling and create their own interpretation of the themes or ideas presented. All I showed was a projection of a telephone pole forming the letter "F", for me it represented isolation, but for many it was soothing and both interpretations are just as valid.

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Today was pretty straight forward, we just had to set up our characters for the crit tomorrow. My plan was equally as simple, build a projector with a lamp and a box with a small hole in it to display a shadow of an F in a dark room. The biggest problem was making the lamp work, I never worked with electricity before, aside from small LED units, so I had to be very carefull. The biggest takeaway from the whole lamp set up is how simple it actually is, but also how dangerous it can be. The biggest concern I had was someone accidentally touching a wire and getting electrecuted, therefore I build a box around the lamp and the wiring made out of wood, that also would minimize casualty in case de lamp exploded or such. Also, the hole in the box was way too small, making the room much darker and also distorting the shadow's shape, however that ended up accentuating the points I wanted to get across with the work, so I will call it an accidental success.

For the two bars on the side of the "F", I was going to do them with wires, but they were too thin for their shadows to appear, so I used paper curled up in a cylindrical shape as a substitute. Paper made for a great substitute since I could control it's shape and give it the "creepy look" of a bunch of telephone wires entangled with eachother. Since the wires werent thich enough to appear in the projection I used them to hang the bars in the ceiling, since using a thicker rope or duct tape would create a shadow. Lastly, while working on the main pole of the letter I had a friend comment that a pole in the middle of the room could be used for that very same purpose. Even though it was mostly a stroke of luck, that idea was genius since it used an element from the room, which I had no controll over, as a core part of my character.

A few hours later the lamp had burned a fuse, so I bought 2 lamps in a nearby market, one for testing today and presenting tomorrow and an extra one in case it short fuses again.

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The first part of the day was very hectic and confusing, even though the task was quite simple, create a lettertype. Since I had some of the letters already dome and my style was quite simple it went by like second nature and without much thought.

However, when designing the 3D movable type I had some deep thought. I had many different ideas with radical different paths, but most of them didnt use the fact that my letter was especifically an "F". In the end I chose to use shadows to represent my letter, that allowed me to focus on the intricate shape without having to worry about building that same shape in a big scale. For the especific shape I chose, it was based around the shot of telephone lines in contrast with the blue sky from the opening animation from Persona 3. That shot had meaning in the game, it represented the distance between people even when in a big city were everywhere seams crowded, it evoques loneless and fear, but also mystery and possibility. That goes hand in hand with what I associate with the letter "F", it stand for agressive words like Fear, Fuck and Fury and it's intricate shape reminds me of a scythe. That also works well with the setting, my shadow will be displayed in a dark storage room, full of boxes and left out work that, when in the dark, become shapeless shadows and give the whole room a creepy vibe.

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Today's task was to experiement various types of printing. One of them was the more tradition silk screen, which involved making a matrix and then putting it in a silking screen. Though it takes a bit to set up, once it is done you can print away 10 copies straight. The paint is bright and solid, making the results quite appealing. The only downside is that one of my prints was flipped horizontaly, though it was just due to a lack of attention, the print afterwards was right.

The second kind of printing was via a mask and then a roller. Since I already have a design ready from the exercise yesterday I was able to print right away and got over 10 prints. The design I chose was one the simplest since I thought a more intrecate design would make the character unrecognizable. If there was one flaw with this technique it's how messy it is. A lot of my prints got dirty because of residual paint or dirty fingers. Besides that I usually stuck with one color per print and when seeing other people's prints the color variety really caught your eye and made the piece quite vibrant. Next time I should experiement more, maybe try using less paint for a washed out effect, or trying a gradiant. Solid colors are nice, but when making 10 diferent pieces it can be quite dull.

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Fpr the typography task we needed to take pictures of accidental pictures and form an entire alphabet out of them. My strategy was to get as many letter with the minimal ammount of pictures. So the Ebac's 3 was my M, E and W. I did that to save time, since we only had 1 hour to get the entire alphabet. At first I tried to explore as many letters withing the art studio, since the place was closer and smaller and it would be faster to look for specific letters downstairs rather than having to look up 10 or so characters. This did give some great results, but it also made my alphabet a bit repetitive. There were also a couple letters that panned out less than great since you wouldnt be able to guess what they were at a glance. Maybe with more time I could have explored the outside of Ebac and found some better candidates.

For the second part we had draw 5 variations of the letter chosen for us, in my case "F". The first thing I did was list what could be considered a variation, so Italic, Serif, Ascender, Descender and any combination of such. After that was just a process of drawing the many combinations of the variations mentioned above and after the 3rd drawing I already had a consistent shape for my letter. I enphasized the geometrical nature of the letter in order for me to draw faster. I also made a modular set of serifs that would make tgan faster to draw rather than having to think especifically about each one. The final product was very formalized and helped me understand and see clearly every aspect of each variation. However some drawing had different proportions, making some letter huge and some even irreconizable.

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At the start of the day we experiemented with a single word which reflected our theme. The word I choose was Possibility, as it was both a sign of empowerment and also one of hope, both feelings which I want to transmit with my protest. After choosing the words I had to develop typografies which would enhance it's meaning. The two things that came to mind were probability and crosswords, I choose the ladder as I had already an idea on how to apply it to a poster and also because the results with the former werent as interesting, it was too illustrated and didnt flow well with other words aside from Possibility.

On the second part we develop a poster with the typography that we choose. I choose the crosswords typography not so much for the font, but for the illustration value. I remembered one crossword based around the election where one space could be filled with the names of both candidates, that illustrates perfectly the power of possibility, which is the core theme of my protest. I then used a side typography which is very tall and thin to display the rest of the text because it resembled typographt near crosswords puzzles as well as looking good against the red background, which I choose because of how eye catching the color is and how easy it reads with white and black.

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In the latest brief we had to research many terms related to typography, most of them were pretty straightforward, but I do admit, I was impressed with the strict regiment of typography, not a single detail is left in the air, everything is accounted for.

However, what made me think was analysing the work of a suggested typographer "Jonathan Barnbook". His take on graphic design as a tool to help society and to make the world a better place is inspiring and exactly what I look for in any art form. This is especially weird when you think of graphic design as beign mostly about typography, it's weird how the such a mundane thing can have such a positive impact on the world. He also has a clear passion for music and that is shown clearly with his involvement as a graphic designer in the music industry, working on the covers for David Bowie's Heathen and Reality albums. He also believes that a comfortable society isnt the best place to look for good art, that goes hand in hand with my view of art, it should work as mirror to society, to show what we usually cant see. Art has the role of the "trickster", a being that is an agent of change, regardless of the consequences, to be an artist is to seek change.

I do disagree with him when it comes to his world view. In an interview he claims that civilization doesnt evolve progressively, but goes through cycles and right now we are in a downfall of "sensationalism, negativity and endless consumption". I critic heavily the idea of the "Waltz of history, a dance with the three beats of peace, war and revolution", data simply doesnt point to that and to believe in it is to discard the endless work of countless people old and new to build a world for everyone. It's true that not every decision leads to progress, but I do believe that we can and we do learn from our mistakes and they help guide us to a better future. I simply refuse to believe humanity is doomed to repeat the same mistakes.

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In today's daily drawing I got reacquainted with watercolor. Inspired by the book I read during summer break, I tried to focus on light and transparency as opposed to solid colors. That was my biggest gripe with watercolor, I love solid vibrant colors that you can get with things like gouache, but the charm of watercolor comes with the lighting. Painting in watercolor is the same as painting the light. I do not feel the result reflects the ideal use of watercolor, I still got a few spaces with solid colors, but I did get some parts with a beautiful gradiant that portrayed the light of the scene quite well.

My studies of colors during summer break also helped me a lot when mixing colors, I was easily able to achieve the "Pearl blue" and "wine-ish" tones of the robot.

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This was the last day of "The Collection" project, we would had the morning to finish the final piece and we would have the crit after lunch. I started with a good idea of what I wanted to do, but when we were instructed to display all of our sketches and experiements I tried to implement as many concepts into the final product as it would make the piece look like a fruit of development and research and not just a first idea that popped into my head. At first I wanted to just glue all the ads I got onto a gymnastics ball, making this big volume of advertisement, but after seeing my print of an earth covered in advertisement I tried to glue the flyers in a manner that resembles the Earth. The I grabbed the only trash can in the room and placed it under the ball and as people threw trash in it there was a pile of trash that looked like it was trying to reach the Earth,  this also resembled a drawing of a monumental pile of flyers that I did this week. I wanted the position of the sphere to be in the center of the class, in way that inconvinieces people and make them dodge it to move around, again, in reference to my previous experiement. However, this didnt really work because of room constraints, there was simply no place to hang such a heavy object in the middle of the room, but I do think that this inconvienience managed to show up with the fact that I had the only trash can. Lastly, I did my performance of distributing flyers for people who got near me, the response was even better than last time since I had a costume on and I also gave people instructions to throw this away in the trash can after grabbing it. This performance did give one of my favorite aspects of the work, after people threw away the flyers some accidentaly fell on the floor, which is a big problem that I wanted to show with my work and it wasnt something planned or acted, it was entirely natural.

This amalgamation of themes and techniques was a very strong point, but it was also the biggest critic I got from my peers and my personal analysis. When you focus on everything you also focus on nothing, there was a big message that everybody understood, "We get a lot advertisement that just becomes trash", however there were so many little messages that are slight derivations of the latter that the work felt a bit overwhelming and hard to read. There was simply too many aspects grabbing your eyes and could very well have made 5 different pieces with all the content I had to work with. Next time I should filter and select which aspects do I want to highlight, even if it means having discart some really good ideas or sketches. The only other downside is that the project is almost impossible to conserve and I am having to rely on photographs for further presentations regarding it. With that in mind I do consider a project a major sucess especially because when starting it I thought that collecting flyers would be a really cliché idea, but it did send a powerful message in the end.

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Today can be broken down into three activities: The experiements with printing techniques, the lecture with Charlie Watson and the first life drawing class.

For the printing techniques we had a few experiements with montype, relief print and drypoint. I already has experience with monotype and though my last exercise had a good result I do not see this techique being used too much since it only produces one copy and takes a while to set up. I did not get to test relief print, though I did see how it works and the results are quite nice, it also has the most enduring matrix of all 3 techniques. As for drypoint, it did seem awfully versatile, it's very cheap, requiring only a plastic matrix, paper and paint and it's also really quick to roll out. The only let downs is that the matrix is fragile, so it will produce small number, I'd wagger around 10, before it starts failing and the scale of the product is very tiny. I can see me using it a lot for flyers though, not sure how it would fare against silk screen though, more research is warranted.

Being able to hear Charlie Watson was very enlightening, we already heard his ideals through our tutors, but it seamed much more fleshed out coming from him. Though his train of though was all over the place one thing that was always present in his sayings is the importance of developing your brain through problem solving and problem finding. For him, creative thinking is a process that can be broken down into science, it isnt genetic and it isnt related to some divine inspiration, being creative means studying and living your work, breaking things down and understanding what works and why. He also pointed out the importance of being adept in various diferent fields, not just for personal enjoyment and growth, but to also enrich your work and help solving problems creatively. For him, and artist who is also aware of astrophysics and the naval industry isnt a gem, it is natural, or at least it should be.

The life drawing classes were very straight to the point, I opted to do 1 full body drawing while the other 4 were focused on zoomed parts of the scene. One problem I have identified is that I struggle to maintain a consistent scale amongst object. Though I feel I am improving with practice, it is still something to focus on the next sessions.

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For my first project I wanted to make an experience where people decided whether or not certain advertisements were useful or not. However, I got the suggestion of sticking ads through my cloathes so it would seam as if I was wearing just advertisements. The results were quite entretaining and I did caught the attention of a lot of people, however I did not have time to develop this idea into a more formal exposition. For one I lacked movement, so I would have to stay frozen in one spot, which would be very hard on my body, and I also could have implemented some level of interaction such as people taking/adding ads from/to my body.

The second project had an interesting conclusion, since I had way less time to plan and execute and yet the result was miles better. At first I wanted to just make a line of ads across the floor, however I did get a suggestion from my peers that I should hang that string of ads up in the air, in a manner that actually impedes movement. The execution was extremely simple as well, though the tape I was using to string them together wasnt strong enough to hold some of the ads. Another problem was the rain and winds, since they put a lot of stress on the tape and it would probably be torn apart given enough time. The result, as I said, was almost perfect, people were going back and forth and they had to always cross tge string of advertisments. The only thing that wasnt very good is that I think I should have made the line of ads thicker, since the position made it hard to know there were ads on the tape. It would be important for people to immediatly know it is advertisment blocking their way, not just some tape.

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Today we needed to do 4 drawing about our collection in order to give a different perspective on the subject. I ended up doing 6 drawing because I wanted to try as many techiniques as I could.

The worst drawing was made with gouache, charcoal and ink. These 3 techiques didnt have much synergy with each other and the result lacked focus and good composition. Aside from the core drawing I should have picked more vibrant colors to break out the immense black from the ink and the charcoal.

The best one by far was made with only charcoal. I dont have a lot of experience with the technique so I had set a very low bar for it, but the result was impressive nontheless.
I tried to capture a tower made of flyers. Because they are naturally very thin I had to do hundreds of lines and the overall look was overwhelming, like this scary monster was looming over you. I should definitly study this one in case I am having trouble with composition.

Two of drawing employed very different techiques, one was a collage and the other used gouache, but they both were excellent examples of how even a small part of a drawing can be great for a recording. The painting had a lot of colors and information, but when I took a picture of just a part of it the picture was much more simple and abstract, even better than the thing as a whole. The collage actually wasnt finished, but taking a proper picture of this unfinished project may have led to a better result than the finished product.

The last drawing was an origami and it relied a lot on the gimmick, if you break down the trail of thought and the techique there isnt much to it, but the idea was very ingenious.

I managed to do everything in time by following the philosophy of not spending more than 30 min in one single drawing, though for a better product I should spend more time to refine it.

The greatest feedback I got was how even a small part of a picture can be much better than the whole thing, as mentioned before

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In today's exercise we had to crit the exposition of people's collection. The act of giving good, respectful and useful feedback is hard, impressively so. My biggest mistake was with compliments, whenever I give feedback on a piece I like or see promise my first instinct is to compliment it. By seeing my peers react to this kind of feedback I can see why saying "your work is good" is worthless. It doesnt improve, point out a flaw or gives a good idea to add to the project.

However, you can still give  a worthless negative feedback. The biggest example is the "feedback" in the form of the simple comment "Why?". This comment fails to point out where the problem is, doesnt enrich with a new perspective or anything like that. It does imply failure, but that much is just not enough and it can be pretty disrespectful as well.

As for the feedback I received, it was incredible and the comment "Your work is very messy" is enlightening to say the least. It helped me develop my performance for the second half of my collection. Though, I do have to put more effort into it in the form of deciding proper dialogue and clothing.

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While further experiementing with gouache I noticed that contrasting colors really arent necessary for a captivating painting. I used 3 tones of a bluish green and even though it's a bit hard to see that sillouete of the painted sword, it does look pretty good.

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Today we had a very intense crit. When I woke up I noticed the video was corrupted and luckly had enough time to upload it again, if the circumstances were any different it would mean not just me, but the entire group would have suffered for my mistake. I will not let that happen, ever.

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Today's project was mostly just following instructions so there wasnt much time for creativity, however, my critical flaw of lack of refinement was there full front. I forgot to put a clean paper in between the two pages I wanted to glue, I was too hasty when folding paper and didnt use a ruler when cutting the spine of the book. Most of these problems could point to either anxiety or impatiance, either way, it's something I need to work on.

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Two things I noticed today were the importance of research and passion. When we went to Tomie Ohtake we had the fantastic oportunity to experience an instalation with the artist by our side commenting on what went through her mind during the creation of that piece. What immediatly caught my eye was the ammount of passion in each sentence, she wasnt merely describing a recipe, it was like she was reliving a fond memory. That passion gave her art character, it made it personal and also gave her a certain degree of expertise. I was also able to ask her about the importance of research during her work, since we had classes about that very subject today, and  to truly do research you must dive into the world that you are studying. If you arent learning new things every day, living and breathing that world than you will miss out on a lot, books and articles just arent enough material to go on. They, however, are excelent for discovering new things. Today we had to pick 10 books, each with a diferent criteria and read one page of that book. Even in such a small portion I was able to discover some incredibly interesting topics that I would love to dive deeper.

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The distinction between Reflective writing and Descriptive writing is something to keep in mind. Reflective writing, which includes opinions and personal thoughts, help to break down my thought process down to science which also helps to understand why a certain project failed when another one succeded.

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Photographing 3D work as soon as possible is a necessity, I was desperate about how quickly my paper suit started to degrade and I got really close to not being able to salvage it.

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I need to be less anxious when finishing a piece of work. One of my biggest mistakes is forgeting to painting the individual parts before putting them together. I feel very unconfortable working without having the final product in front of me, but it makes the refinement and especially the painting process much harder.

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Today I experienced first hand the soul of telling a story. A friend of mine had designed a game for us to play and whenever the players tried to experiement and express themselves through the game mechanics we were prohibited or even punished for doing so. Be it in games, movies or books, the enjoyment of the person experiencing should always come first, a grand story is nothing without someone to listen to it. Relating more to games, as a designer your first and most important job is to entretain the person playing, even if that means having to double or triple the work you did or throwing away setpieces and scenes you spent hours constructing. It may sound demoralizing to be essencially a servent of your audience but I find the experience enticing.

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When dealing with material as versetile as paper for the construction of a 3D object it is important to be aware of your options. All the plans I had made for my paper suit had relied on the use of glue and tape, when those options had been taken away I thought I would have to throw the whole project away, but I managed to adapt my blueprints to new strategies, at least in part.

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From the 3 observational drawing, the first one was an experiement with "drawing loosely" and the results were amazing. The second drawing was much slower and rigid and the results were much worse. For now I will try to experiement drawing loosely with other techniques such as watercolor.

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After doing some research I started to think about the most important aspect of an artwork for a protest, graphic design. A protest needs to transmit a message, mostly to crowds, as it generates more mobilization and for that message to be clear it needs to have a good graphic design. Last year when designing my poster I focused a lot on illustration, on just telling a visual story, however the "shape" of that story, such as the typeface, composition, color pallete was something that wasnt explored nearly as much as I should've. In my research I noticed 2 artists in particular who took my attention, Jonathan Barnbrook and Noma Bar.

Jonathan's works with typefaces in posters related to his activist activities shows the power of letter forms. There is a saying that the message itself isnt what is important, it's how you say it and in a visual media the font and the composition of the text can be just as important as what is written. Also, most of his work doesn include a lot of text, his messages are clea, consize and are a part of the image instead of just being a description of an illustration.

Noma Bar, on the other hand has a really impressive textless work. His style is simple and incredibly charming as well as being easy to digest. This kind of approach to transmiting a message is essencial when it comes to a protest as it shaves away all the unecessary information and leaves just the essence and the heart of the work. "Sometimes you need to take away almost everything to preserve what really matters".

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Today can be summarised into 2 parts: The first was a sequence of different artist that work with activism and protests and though no one in particular was a big font inspiration, it was very good to see trends and standart design when making such an act. Most impressively is how most protests could have their message condensed into a single quote, some of them included text, but very few required the reader to stop and read a huge ammount of words. Actually, words were treated mostly as drawings, by looking at the typography you could get a better sense of the message, some typefaces were more handrawn and organic , while others were rigid and patternized, regardless, they were more than just a veichle for the words, they were part of the drawing.

That leads into the second part, where we had to pick a cause or an ideal, explore it as far as we can and then reduce it to a single sentence. My original idea was to critic the nihilistic views towards voting and the illusion that you lack the power to make a difference, that is something that frustrates me because it is integrated into my life. My friends, very young people that can and should be making a diference just stand still and watch the world continue to flow to whatever the previous generation decided. However, when developing that idea I decided to turn it into something more broader, the general feeling of powerlesness in our society. That decision allows me to more easily condense the message into less words and also expands my audience to any person, in other words, it makes it easier to convey the message. My last problem is one that I havent solved yet and it is how to display this message without dumbing down the content. When talking about, for my example, having the power to change the world people usually try to show it with something mundane, like giving a pen to someone that needed one, or showing something that is completly unrealistic, like giving money to someone on the street and that person then becoming a millionaire. Either way, it simplifies the problem to a point where we cannot grow from it, making a change isnt easy, it isnt about just picking the right choice and it's often a sacrifice that doesnt end with a reward, but it is possible and I know that anyone can do it.

Maybe I can explore that conundrum, how can I say that anyone can do it and yet talk about how hard it is? It is something to think about at least, though I doubt I will have time in this project.

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Amongst the wave of techniques and skills for editing video, the aspects of coloring had the biggest impacts. I usually thought of colour and a colour palette  as something restricted to one scene. So my films would start with vibrant colors, jump to more washed out pastels, than go to neons to saturated primaries, so on and so forth. There was no integrity amongst the whole piece. That is also a quick fix if you know about color grading and vector scoping.

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Biggest mistake of the day, I lost my sketchbook somewhere and forgot to put my contact on it, this is a good reminder to always keep my materials tightly secured and remember to put a way to contact me on expensive material such as some of my brushes.

I also went to the Sou Fujimoto exhibition and her work was stunning. Most surprising part was how she combined scale and material to give meaning to her work. I also felt that the small human models gave the sense that this weirdly shaped structures could be actual building, which I personally think was the intention since she constantly mentioned architecture.

Lastly, in today's drawing diary I tried drawing with a regular pencil and then coloring some parts with gouache, trying to make a "special effect" of sorts. The result was good, however I do feel that the solid colors of gouache dont looks good with the rough lines of a pencil, maybe watercolor will yield a better result.

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With the progress tutorial coming I need to figure out my to do list for the next few days. The biggest priority is to print in a good quality the photographs I took from past projects. Most of them are either gone by now or are in a very decayed state, mostly due to them being frail 3d projects that had no hope of lasting this long, especially in our classroom and especially in my house. The secondary priority is to finish the projects I need to finish, I put that in second because I dont have much that I need to work on, mostly just the Photography research task, since it was the project we had the least time. The final priority is to read more references that I can add to my research file, since all the projects are over I have doubts to the immediate usefulnes of that research, but in the long run it will help me build a bigger repertoir of sources and inspiration.

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Today it really dawned on me the importance of having a vast experience across multiple tools and techniques. Though the rough result will be the same in after effects, premier or even a open source video editor, when it comes to the fine refinement and the specific needs of a certain project it is really important to have experiencie with many softwares to suit those specific needs.

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Not much to take away from the first day, but the grading system is much more severe than last year.