Trial & Tribulation.

Semester one of the HND Interactive Media course is over, and what a rollercoaster it’s been! Having looked back over the last fifteen weeks I’m amazed at the amount of knowledge I’ve gained on the modules covered so far. My enthusiasm for the course (as expected) has remained at a high level from the very beginning and feel confident this will be the case throughout the remainder of my time at Wakefield college. However, my commitment to each assignment has varied considerably, quite often making the mistake of focusing more time on one than another.

The referral of our second assignment (A2: A Journey of 1000 Miles) really knocked my confidence and having been informed this would be the easiest module of the sixteen had me questioning my ability to successfully complete the course, as I feel I’d done everything possible to attain a pass. However, after considering my referral points I realised the amendments that needed to be made weren’t too significant and would be fairly straight forward to correct to enable a pass.

Once A2 was passed and out of the way we were assigned our third and fourth assignments of the first semester; A3: Sounds Like a Plan and A4: Typecast. After reading both assignment sheets I was very excited and eager to get started, although worried that being faced with three assignments running simultaneously with one another I wouldn’t be able to keep up. Also the fact that project planning is not one of my strong points feared I would be unable to dedicate an equal amount of time to each project.

Unfortunately as expected this did in fact become an issue, with me spending the majority of self study time on A3 whilst A4 took a back seat. Hopefully this hasn’t effected my overall grade of the assignments and I’ll be able to achieve my first clear pass of the course, thus allowing me to focus my full attention on the projects ahead. Having now completed a quarter of the HND Interactive Media course I now intend to asses my approach to previous tasks, learn from my mistakes and create an action plan that I can utilise throughout the rest of the course, ultimately making me stronger and more capable of achieving success.

One area of my study I know needs more focus is A1: Sketchblog, an assignment that is ongoing throughout the duration. This assignment involves the use of a sketchbook used to collect pieces of annotated inspiration and develop our early design ideas using evolving thumbnails during the ideas generation process of a project. Unfortunately I often find myself too eager and jump straight into the electronic design phase rather than spend time drafting thumbnails.

I am aware that this needs to change if I’m to attain a pass for the Sketchblog assignment, therefore intend to address this issue by allocating a sufficient amount of time to ideas generation and learn to develop my designs in the correct manor. We are now about to begin our second semester, which to be honest is quite a scary thought! Nevertheless I’m looking forward to it, putting into practice everything I have learnt during the past fifteen weeks.

Back to the grind stone.

I have to say I feel this could be the most difficult post yet, simply due to the fact that it’s been such a long time since the last! The Christmas break was a real double edge sword for me, I was glad of a rest as it gave me time to relax and wind down whilst leisurely getting things in order for A3 and A4, however the time out really did interrupt the flow of the assignments having a strong effect on my get up and go!

Prior to the holidays we were well under way with the mini assignments of A4 and have now completed an additional four to the previous Hokai and Vodafone projects, Type Trumps, Saints & Sinners, Grid and Story. I really have enjoyed taking part in these mini projects and feel I’ve learnt a lot from them in respect to issues such as time management and production/project planning, not to mention the design knowledge and experience gained.

All in all I would say that I’ve done reasonably well with all six projects with the exception of Saints & Sinners! Unfortunately I feel I may have made the mistake of choosing the wrong route for this design and feared turning back and starting over which resulted in a less than satisfactory piece.

We’ve now had our first week back at the grind stone and I must admit I’m starting to feel the pressure with both A3 and A4 deadlines fast approaching. The majority of the work is now complete and I feel that a good few days hard at it should see the end of them, I just hope that everything is in order, no mistakes have been made and that I might actually get my first clear pass of the course.