Evaluation

I feel that this end of year Major Project has allowed me to develop my skills as a visual communicator considerably. Most notably, I have developed skills significantly in the software I am able to use, as well as the way that I use software. This is applicable to Flash, Dreamweaver, InDesign and even Photoshop.

I am now able to execute simple procedures in Flash to produce simple animations for things like interactive adverts. I developed further independence by largely learning how to use this by doing video tutorials, something I also started doing for After Effects. I did however learn to seek help from tutors and technicians. I knew how to build HTML websites in Dreamweaver from the Future Technology project, but I applied this knowledge to developing skills in CSS, which I also largely learnt from video tutorials. By challenging myself to build a CSS site, I was able to produce a much higher quality site than I otherwise would have done. I also incorporated InDesign into this project, something I learnt from the Visual Exploration project at the beginning of the year. Additionally, I had to use Photoshop to edit images before placing them in Dreamweaver. Therefore, I see this project as a culmination of skills from the last year.

The major project has given me an ideal chance to work on a live project. I was able to combine my extra-curricular activities with course work by doing Gracefest promotion work.

Although I drew up a schedule at the beginning of the project, it was very rough as I did not know how long it would take to learn software like Flash. If I had known the timings more accurately, I believe I could have used the time more efficiently, which would have allowed me to push boundaries even further. I intended to use After Effects in the project at some point but this did not happen- mostly because there was no need to use it.

I looked at many different websites before I started designing the website, particularly festival websites, however I did not look at a wide enough range of sites that I could have gained more ideas from. Despite this, I needed to be ambitious but not unrealistic in what I could do. I like the Flash splash page of ‘The Secret Garden’ website, but I doubt I would have been able to create such a page in my site on this project as it was the first time I had used Flash. There were technical problems, but these were expected and I was able to work them out.

In conclusion, I believe this project has rightfully been the most successful project I have undertaken this year by far. I have developed skills considerably and pushed myself in several areas, while working on a live brief. The project has acted as a springboard into the second year where I hope to learn how to use more software more effectively so that I can improve my practice.