Q/A and other stuff

This latest class of concept development was quite enjoyable. We had brought 10 images that changed the meanings of a word or phrase we chose. It was entertaining to see what we could come up with and I found it to be a very fun and beneficial project. We were also assigned questions that had to be answered here.

Have you experienced your own or other people's fear-based reactions to your creative education and career choices?  

Oh yes but only when I was younger around the time of early high school and late elementary school which is  of course a strange time to worry about a future career. Although most of t hat worry came from the odd friend and never from family  some of my elementary school faculty thought it was odd.a waste to sign up for a high school that had specialized media and art programs when I could just go to another cheap ass school instead. Other then that I on't think I've truly been worried about my future, as I intend to design video games, I can fall back on regular design work, and if that somehow fails I can easily fall back on IT work, really never had these fears or had them expressed to me.

How have you successfully overcome these reactions?

Well I think I prematurely answered this question in my previous answer. Although like I said before outside of some odd comment from when I was quite young I never truly had these fears of working with my creativity nor did I really have it expressed to me. So there wasn't much to overcome

What is your concept of your creative process?

I do mostly basic creation. I first get an understanding of what I need to make or design and then I just kind of go with the flow. I've never been one for planned layouts or specific routes, I often only follow guidelines when they're related to a school project of some sort. Although I imagine when working for someone else I will also have to follow some form of guidelines  But my creative process simply does with me drawing or on the computer and playing with concepts. My creative process also tends to be oone of borrowing, as in I borrow elements from previous works or things I've seen throughout my life, a life of inspiration one might say.

How do you approach creating, making?

I don't do anything special I simply turn music on, if I feel like it, and set about brainstorming.  I of course thing about what I'm trying to create and head down a certain direction in hopes of finding an idea and refining it. More often then not I'll sketch a large amount of rough ideas only to find one idea I truly like more then the rest, and at that point I go ahead and set about refining and improving it. My creation doesn't always take place in a sketchbook either as I often have ideas swirling in my head when on my computer, and with digital media there's a lot more fine creations in terms of brainstorming as I find work on the computer far harder to replicate then work made by hand.

Images and their meanings

This week we only had one class of concept development, due to the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday on Monday. This class was quite entertaining however. In context we needed 10 mood/image changing slogans for a single simple image. The results were quite interesting and how the images were twisted were also intriguing. In my personal opinion I enjoyed this project because it really forced me to think, and even then I know my best 10 were not the best they could have been. I could see the same issues reflected in other peoples work, it was actually more difficult for people depending on the actual images they had. Those people with pictures of people often had the easier time spinning the message or the mood, since they could make indirect references to people or go in the exact opposite direction of the base image. Some people with more complicated pictures also had a harder time because with more elements in the image it was harder to make the image mean more then a couple of things let alone 10. There were of course more then a couple of people that succeeded in this project although I have to admit that no one, in my opinion, had a perfect 10, although a lot of us had several good ones. With this next assigned project, an almost opposite of the previous assignment, we have to match a word or phrase to 10 different images. I think this will be more successful in general as the range of images to match or add to a word or phrase is much easier to find, especially since we can use images from the internet.

Week 2, coconut killers

The Wednesday of the second week rolls around now, bringing another interesting bout of concept development class. Due to a previous assignment by the professor we all brought several images of single items or simple looking images from magazines. Then with a coconut and paintbrush image plastered to the wall we had to create slogans or text for it, that would alter the image and mood. While I know I'm just repeating what I did a bit of an explanation is needed for any of the forthcoming text to make sense. With ideas, or lack of ideas, in head we started shouting off text that we feel could alter the meaning of the coconut. Several allusions to Hawaii an travel were made, of course, I found my own creativity lacking because I could scarcely think of 1 good one. The one thought about coconuts that kept running through my head was the one funny statistic about them: That falling coconuts kill more people per year on average then sharks. Some silly fact I learned during my usual bouts of shark week, but that's  the idea I was trying to formulate into short interesting words. The idea never fully came to me but I'm determined to use it somehow. My peers however came up with several very good slogans, for both the paintbrush image and coconut. The follow up assignment so far has proven to be both fun but challenging. To make 10 good slogans for 1 of our images, with his own advice to make 100 just to be sure we have a good number to choose from. This assignment is a bit hard I won't lie but at the same time I like the need to think harder or sometimes less about the ideas I need to formulate.  

Week 2, rough starts

Well the second week has rolled around for me at school. This blog starts off later then others, due to my own negligence. However I am determined to catch up. This concept development class is very interesting to me. With game design as my own side hobby/goal concept development is a core issue in this case. Of course its  a core issue for a majority of creative outlets, whether its for game design or marketing. So far the class has also been very entertaining. The activities we do, often in groups, are quite fun due to the fact that they require creativity and a good amount of cleverness to meet the goals at hand. These activities, while fun, are of course good teaching mechanisms for design as well as group work. Personally I have never liked group work unless it was done with close friends who I know I could trust. In all my previous G.E. classes whenever a group project or paper was announced I cringed and often asked if I could possibly do the assignment solo. However with this class its different since before it was a large number of majors jumbled together, in this class there's nothing but interest for art therefore everyone is willing to contribute. To leave on a serious note, the class while fun does have its goals that need to be met, we must be creative but it has to be a clever use of creativeness to truly be appreciated or outstanding.