More Flash & Work Placements

Flash Newsflash...do you see what I've done there?

Well, a week until hand in and my project is coming along at a pretty good speed. Not quite finished yet, some final scenes and a bit of tweaking to go still but I should make the deadline without too much worry. Had a bit of feedback from other students and Jon (Flash teacher) and everyone really likes the stop-motion and mask effect on the opening scene and the shark fin. I've had a few problems using the software but am actually quite pleased with how much I've been able to do. Really need to practice my software skills as I think this project would have been easier, quicker and looked better if I knew what the hell I was doing with CS3! I found some online tutorials at www.entheosweb.com/Flash that have come in really handy. I have also been introduced to www.kuler.com which I think will be invaluable for the remainder of this course and in industry.

I have emailed Imagine Publishing about a work placement but not heard anything from them yet. I was told the person I needed to speak to was on holiday until Tues, so I hoping they will reply by Fri, if not I'll chase them up.

DKLW emailed me to say they are waiting for some people to get back from shooting an Ad in New Zealand and will let me know something in a week or two.

Flash project update

Had a PAL session this morning and went over ideas for our Flash projects. I heard some really good concepts from other students and Luke, George and Viki were encouraging in their feedback and suggested ways around problems for some people. I think their main point was to try and keep it simple and storyboard everything before hand, otherwise it gets complicated.

Taking this on board I have radically "dumbed-down" my ideas. I was happy to do this really as I was starting to go into far too much detail and was getting concerned how I was going to present the project, but now I aim to go for a simple-but-effective approach. It will mostly be appropriate typography with the odd animation to highlight the point.

Am going to start storyboarding it this week and get a narrative for the piece completed by next week.

Flash & DLKW

With Amnesty done and dusted I'm moving on to Flash lessons and securing a work placement. Only had one Flash class so far which was about as exciting as watching paint dry. Our brief is quite open and should be fun to work though. My initial idea was to complete my animation on red wine as we were told to pick a subject close to our hearts! I have changed track slightly since then and think I'm going to go with either sharks in general or a kind of "anti" Australia film. Before I went there all anybody would tell me was how I was going to be attacked by a shark or a croc or bitten by a snake or a spider. Everyone seems obsessed about these creatures by in truth, according to statistics, more deaths are attributed to bee stings than shark attacks. Boring eh?

As for work experience, I think I have secured a place at DLKW (Delany Lund Knox Warren) a huge advertising agency based in London, Convent Garden. I have actually been given the all clear yet but it looks promising. I am as excited as I am scared by the prospect of going to such a large and important agency. The experience will be unforgettable I'm sure. Fingers crossed it all goes well.