Semester 7.3

Anyway, I jumped on the assignment early, feeling impressed to do so. That was the miracle. As the days and weeks progressed I felt impressed WHEN I should work on the assignment and when I should instead focus on my family.
As always, I even worked on my lunch breaks at my day job assignment.

As the critiques continued, the mocking continued. However, I was one of the few people to arrive at class with anything to show. Others showed up with thoughts and ideas or questions; not physical work to show their progress.

The weekend the assignment was due I poured my heart and soul into the assignment. Because of my previous paced work I was not stressed and had tons of excellent material to work with and off of. It was excellent.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, however you choose to look at it, I worked so long in one sitting the Sunday before it was due I ended up hurting my neck and I made myself sick. As a result I was unable to finish. I also discovered right before I decided I had to stop for the night that our class instructor emailed us templates that we were supposed to include our work with. I did not have the current version of the program needed to pull up the attachment he provided so I was not able to apply it.

The next day I was still overcome from the day before and decided to call in sick to work so that I could recover. I slept in and woke up 2 hours prior to class.
I hustled to school and pulled up the program I couldn't access the instructor's file in the night before. I finished applying my last minute changes and was just finishing the application of my pictures to the template when the instructor walked in to start class.

I was set up to go third but I didn't save the file from the template program correctly into the PDF file I needed in order to be able to see everything. So, I ended up going next to last. Now I'm glad I did.
Most kids only provided the minimum of 4 pictures. 2 of the students' work strongly suggested that only the minimal amount of time was spent on the assignment (20 minutes or so. Sometimes the students do the assignment right before class, just to have something to turn in).
4 of the students did only a red, white, and black theme. Several of them conveyed how they didn't know anything about the convention they picked and had not done any research.
More than 2 students used cut-out people in their designs to show size vs. dimension, as opposed to real people. Multiple students either didn't use perspective in their designs or claimed they didn't know how. My arguement to that is we were given 3 weeks to do this, so if they didn't know how to do it why didn't they ask?
Only 1 other student created some time of shadow effect and none of them used any lighting effects.
Many actually showed up with questions about the assignment!

When it was my turn I had heard and seen enough of the competition I knew how to present myself. All I can say is, it was awesome. I spoke, what I felt, was with power. I conveyed my ideas clearly enough, with excitment and energy. I had 3 more pictures than required, for a total of 7. I used photos of people in costume at the convention to show dimision, which is a big deal at those conventions. I had the posters I used for my inspiration (Mood Board) decorating the walls. I told them that I wanted to do more than just put up banners; I wanted to decorate for a party!
In my research I also included copy on the banners regarding who the guest speakers would be, upcoming movie stars/directors, and various events. I do a lot of artwork that could be seen at conventions like that one so I even included a banner of my own work at the convention. I used shadows, illumiation effects, posters, cardboard cut-outs for fans, and even a 3D globe in the signs!
I wanted to make it an event that everyone would want to go to.

When the discussion came around I got lots of good reports. One student tried to argue a piece of my designs. To my surprise, another student, who was a fan of such conventions, spoke up in my defense. That had never happened before!
She and I then had a quick banter specifically regarding the topic. Our instructor looked at us as though we were speaking a different language (which we pretty much were) and said, "Well, at least you know what you're talking about." That was proof that I had discovered the way to connect with the target audience!
I also made a special mention to the student whose previous critique made me so mad. I mentioned how I actually decided to take her advice and I pointed out where and how I did it. Her response was simply, "Cool..."

So I was really pleased with how it turned out. I'm actually looking forward to adding those pieces to my portfolio.
I've yet to receive my heart-shaped Package Design box back. The instructor said he wanted to hold on to some of them so that he could put some of them up on display. I should be getting mine back after the next semester starts.