End of Week 8

Identify overlapping themes, particularly in your personally directed work:

- are there connections between ideas, approaches to materials or attitudes that you have you used in all or any of these projects. If so, what are they? If not, what are the main differences?

I would say that one thing which connects all three of my projects is the focus on people rather than objects or buildings. In the design project, it was about characters and personality of that character, in media, it was photography and a bit of illustration focusing on the imagination of the subject in the photos, and in art it was about the way that the subjects hands change over time. I think that this shows that I have an interest in people and their thoughts/feelings, which is evident in all my projects so far. I have found that I like to develop ideas through mind maps, and like to map out the journey that i have taken to get their so as to organise my thoughts. I would say that some differences did start to emerge with each project, as I believe that with each one I got more open and willing to let go of the control, and 'voyage into the unknown.'

Compare how you have used your time between this project and the last.

I spent a lot more of the time for this project working on experimenting and playing with the materials, and the final piece happened by accident, whereas with the design and media projects, I spent a lot of time at the end of the project working specifically on a final piece, with an idea of what I was doing and a plan before I completed it.

Looking back over the last eight weeks are there patterns emerging in how you manage your project work?

I definitely think that my way of managing my project work has evolved over the last eight weeks. I started the design project having the whole project mapped out, with a number of 'steps' which I felt that I had to tick off and complete before moving forward with the project, in a linear way. In the media project, I planned it out less, but still gave myself time at the end to work through an idea and develop a final piece, whereas for the art project, I didn't plan anything at all and just let it all happen by chance, and the final piece sort of just happened as a pure accident. All three ways of working produced different results, all of which I was happy with, but I think on the whole, I like the structure of the deign project the best, but I would definitely like to use elements of the media and art creative processes.

Begin to outline your own particular strengths and weaknesses in relation to all of these approaches.

I think that being able to follow the brief whilst also coming up with artistic solutions is one of my strengths, which is one of the things that has lead me into wanting a career in costume design.

Consider where/ how you fit into these different ways of working.

I think that I am closer to the middle of the three groups, with a mostly design based way of working, but with elements of both art and media. I like working towards a brief, with a design based creative process, but I like the freedom and creative play that comes with art, and from media, I really found the if that I was able to mediate what the viewer was seeing and input my own thoughts into the work to be something that interests me.

Use this week’s reflections to identify, or confirm possible future career directions.

I think that where I have realised that I fit into the art/media/design circles matches up with what I want to do in the future, which is costume and theatre design, in which you have to work to a brief and a character description, from the script or book (like design), but you also have the opportunity to present the character to the audience however you choose (like media), and in the end you have to have the creativity from art, as you and the directors/writers/designers are creating a piece of art in the form of a theatre production.