OUIL 406 End of Module Evaluation

Leeds College of Art BA (Hons) ILLUSTRATION	Level	04
OUIL406 Visual Communication	Credits	20
End of Module Self Evaluation

NAME

Joe Baker

1.  What have you learn about visual communication during this module and how effectively do you think you have applied these ideas? I have
I have learned that it’s the simple ideas which are most effective and communicate ideas the best. For example some if the gifs hardly moved but these work often the most funny and original. I often struggle keeping my work simple and this is something I’m going to work on but one example I can give is in the postcards brief where I have stripped back most of the detail trying to make the image as simple as possible but still achieving some depth. Also in the class task where we had to make a poster for a famous person without using their face, I tried keeping mine as simple as possible and drew a bear being grilled and everyone seemed to like it.
2. What approaches to/ methods of image making have you developed and how have they informed your concept development process?
I have developed skills in making moving images in Photoshop, this resulted in me stripping my drawings/ characters back and making them much simpler as we were required to draw many frames and if your work was detailed then you’re making the task extremely stressful and tedious for yourself. I have also developed skills in illustrator and the same rule applies about simple work being the key, as it is much less time consuming and is often more effective and eye catching than detailed work. Another skill I have developed is my use of coloured pencils, I have been wanting to inject more colour into my work and ive found than making to drawing more expressive and looser gives a much better outcome than keeping my pictures tight and tidy. Im glad that im starting to break away from all my work being representational.
3. What strengths can you identify in your work and how have/will you capitalise on these?
One strength I can identify is the testing in my sketchbook, this is mainly on the persons of note brief but I think it’s a big improvement from my previous briefs. And as a result of this testing I have ended up making a final poster using media I very rarely use and its been one of my favourite drawings yet. So I will defiantly learn from this and draw more testing and experiments next time and hopefully ill come up with more ideas to use in the future. I believe most of my work is made to a high quality and had a lot of time invested in it and I hope this shows in most of my final pieces, although I said simple ideas are sometimes best, I think that having work that looks well crafted lots of time spent on it can also be a good way of making work interesting.
4. What weaknesses can you identify in your work and how will you address these in the future?
I think I sometimes come to sudden decisions rather than being developmental in my sketchbook, for example in the post card brief I decided I was doing scenes from cities with towers and as soon as I drew my first rough I started to vector it rather than developing the drawing to make it more compositional/ interesting. Next time I will try and dedicate more time to roughing. Another weakness is I feel I sometimes don’t consider how my project final pieces tie together, whether it be style, colour pallet etc. This isn’t so much in the postcard brief but all my gifs look totally different and so do my final pieces for this last brief, next time I am going to try and make my final pieces work more as a set by restricting my self to certain colours/ media, as this will give my work a higher illustrative quality. I also believe my blogging could have been more consistent, unfortunately this time I let the blogging get on top of me and ive struggled to remember my thought process of certain ideas when I come to blog about it. Next time I am buying a note pad and keeping it with my sketchbook so whenever I think of an idea I can just write it down and not worrying that I have to log on and blog straight away.
5. Identify five things that you will do differently next time and what do you expect to gain from doing these?
I will definitely blog much more consistently and as I mentioned before I will get a note pad or dedicate a few pages in my sketchbook to writing ideas and thought process down to aid my blogging, I I expect that this will boost my ability to reflect on my work it will make me less stressed about having to blog something as soon as I’ve thought about it or forgetting ideas. Next time I am going to try and make my development work in my sketchbook more exhaustive, I think me work could be a lot more effective than it is and maybe if I did more trail and error this could be solved. One big thing is I’m going to try and not worry and stress about my work/ work load. I believe this will help me perform much better and ill be more awake in class if I’ve had some proper rest, although this might be a tricky one to handle as I tend to worry quite a lot. Next time I will also do more artist research, I always feel more inspired when I look through artists pictures who I like so this will hopefully this will give me more ideas to try new media and processes. In the next brief I am going to try my best to get on with work as soon as we get set it, rather than leaving things till we get set more work which makes everything lot harder, I expect this will give me a more positive attitude towards my studies and I will enjoy it more.
6.How would you grade yourself on the following areas: (please indicate using an ‘x’)  5= excellent, 4 = very good, 3 = good, 2 = average, 1 = poor
	1	2	3	4	5
Attendance			x
Punctuality				x
Motivation		x
Commitment				x
Quantity of work produced		x
Quality of work produced			x
Contribution to the group			x
The evaluation of your work is an important part of the assessment criteria and represents a percentage of the overall grade. It is essential that you give yourself enough time to complete your written evaluation fully and with appropriate depth and level of self-reflection. If you have any questions relating to the self-evaluation process speak to a member of staff as soon as possible.