The first session i attended was "Word art: using words creatively". Within the session we were looking at using words we wouldn't usually use within our blogs, to make each post sound better and flow more fluently as your reading it. In groups of 4 or 5 we wrote down possible words that could be used instead of the obvious ones you would usually go for. We also analysed a picture in our groups, thinking about the artist, what the piece looks like how we feel about it etc. overall it was helpful. But it didn't help me as much as would have liked, and i feel i should have gone to one of the other two sessions that was held at the same time.
After a shot break i went to my next session which was "Shaping your writing". This session was there to help us think about what we're writing and what we want to tell the person reading our blogs. Working in groups again, but this time only in 2 or 3 we made a short comic strip, only 5 cells long. The strip would contain a clear message that we had to show. Getting the idea of blog writing into a more physical arty style helped me a lot. I'm not particularly fond of writing, its hard for me, and i think this tactic of moving the same message to a different media really helped me understand what i need to do in my future blog posts.
The third session was entitled "The tools of visual practice and using them in your critical writing". It was all about helping us use the skills we've learned in our visual design classes and connecting them to our blogs. It didn't feel to me like it was working on our blogs, it felt more like help with digital painting. On our own this time we had to describe a scene for the upcoming Last of Us film, based on the game of the same name. The task was simple. Write what popped into our heads for each of the words they told us, but we only had 30 seconds to do so. Then we had a further few minutes to describe the scene in a paragraph.
After we had all done, we handed them into Mitch, one of our visual design teachers, who then picked one to digitally paint as he saw fit.
The paragraph he chose to paint was by Max Bostock and is as follows. "A scene with two figures in the foreground (Ellie and Joel) on a long sun basked highway in the afternoon light. A city with crumbling skyscrapers is in the distance silhouetted by an evening sun. Purple shadows of the buildings are creeping towards them. On the side of the road is a large sign consumed by the growing tree/woods entwining itself with the sign and covering the lettering so the name of the city is only partially known showing how the old way of living is truly lost and the sun has set on civilization? Abandoned, ransacked cars are on the road, further reinforcing how humans are now like ghosts."
The result is this.
This session was my favorite of the day, probably because it seemed to focus less on the blogs and more on digital painting.
The Final session was all about time keeping, avoiding distractions and avoiding procrastination in general. "Practical strategies for getting on with it" was the name of the session, it was in sort of a grey area in terms of how it helped me. It did help, but the session didn't include anything i didn't already know. My next step in is to put some of the methods into practice that were included in the session. I already use lists when doing my work to help me keep track of what i need to do, but i will now try to allocate time slots for each task.
The day as a whole was a success to me, not as much as i was hoping for, but it did help quite a lot. In my future blog posts I'm going to use some of the skills and methods I learnt on Wednesday, which will hopefully help me write better posts, in a faster time with better readability.
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