07/05/14-08/05/14

To be honest I don't feel there is a great deal to write about this week. I was really surprised that I am really on track with the Taking Stock module, and I think I may have pretty much done all the work I need to do. All I really needed to do for this module was to add an example of somebody who works in Art Therapy for my 5 year plan, just to show that such a job exists, and to show that people can make a living from it. This didn't take too long, and I did actually find somebody local who uses Art Therapy in their work, which is really interesting. Even though it was only basic information, I did find the website really informative, and covers pretty much everything you would need to know about their work, in an easy to read bullet point format.

http://righttherapist.com/dir/therapist-listings/pamela-jackson/

However, I have felt very tired during this week at college, and therefore I felt like I haven't done as much coursework than I could do if I was not feeling tired. I didn't sleep well on Wednesday night, and I have had a lot on my mind recently, so this could be a possible cause for this. However, things at college have been very relaxed this week, and Neil has been very understanding about this.

Also this week I have continued to edit my video tutorials, and have edited and exported three of my six video tutorials at home. I tried to export an edited video tutorial at college this week, but as with last week exporting a video takes a very long time (in this case, over an hour) which drastically drained the laptop's battery, and eventually there wasn't enough battery life to export the video, so I decided to save it for later to export at home.

A similar problem arose when I had to render my Pac Man level, because my display in this year's exhibition at college will be an A2 render, this takes much longer than a standard render (around 10 minutes) which also drained the laptop's battery. This is also worse, because, unlike iMovie, it is difficult to perform other tasks while a project is rendering.

To be honest I do feel like the work I need to do to hand in next week will certainly be manageable, and I do feel pleased that I have managed to keep on track with this project.

30/04/14-01/05/14

Wednesday

It was really nice to see and to catch up with everyone after the Easter break today, and everybody seemed happy to see each other. Today we just had to show the work we have done so far, as well as continue with our journals. Over Easter I had managed to complete a draft of a five year plan, as well as evaluate on most of my previous journal entries. Even though I felt I probably rambled a bit in my five year plan, everybody seemed really impressed by it. Because the other students could see how much I have written in my five year plan, and seemed quite amazed by it, I made a joke about being the "Hermione Granger" of the group. Well, I have the same birthday as Emma Watson, who plays Hermione in the Harry Potter films, so i guess we have some things in common.

I think I was in a funny mood today, wanting to have a laugh and a joke a bit today, which did feel good and made me feel happy. One of the things I remember joking about was names of AntiVirus software. One of my friends' laptops had AVG Anti Virus, and I was wondering what AVG stood for. Apparently it stands for "Anti Virus Guard."I misheard this, and thought they said "Anti Virus God!" So I just said as a joke "Dear God, please protect this computer from any viruses, Amen!"

Thursday

Today was more about the work we need to do for our final projects and the end of year exhibition at Stafford College. As I have learned to do, to give me enough to do during my day at college, I wrote a list of tasks I wished to complete today. Since I prefer recording the tutorials at home, I decided that I will edit or re-record the videos at home, depending on how long it would take and how I feel about the video tutorials I have already recorded.

The first task I started today was to perfect what I have made in my video tutorials - The Pac Man level! For this, I altered Pac Man and the ghosts slightly, as well as add other assets to the game level, such as fruit (cherry) and the dots Pac Man eats during the level. I know that I will need to at least have some renders to display in the exhibition, and this is why I wanted to work on this first. It was a bit irritating that Maya crashed when I was modeling the cherry so I had to start again sadly. Although to be honest the cherry was a lot better when I modeled it the second time!. Neil also showed me a quick way to create all the dots, using "Duplicate Special" in the "edit" menu. I could sort of remember this, but I haven't really used it in a while, because there hasn't been much I have needed to Special Duplicate for a very long time. This lets you make multiple copies of an object, and can also rotate, move or scale in the Special Duplicate as well, so objects will rotate, move or scale in the Special Duplicate. This made the task much simpler, quicker and less tedious, and in no time at all I had all the dots I needed for my Pac Man Level.

I also attempted to use iMovie for the very first time this morning. This was initially quite confusing, as most software probably is at first, especially knowing from working on Arts and Media based courses for the past few years, using programs such as Maya, Unity, Photoshop and Illustrator, all of which do take a while to get used to, even when you haven't used these programs for a while. I wanted to edit the latest video tutorial I had recorded over the Easter Holidays, because I felt pleased with the information given in the tutorial, but I remember getting openly frustrated when Maya briefly closed down during the tutorial, so I wanted to edit that part out. This did take a while to understand, and it doesn't make clear how to save videos either. From what I remember you can just simply delete selected parts of a video by just selecting the part of the video you want to delete, then press the backspace key. Also, iMovie automatically saves your workspace, but if you want to create a new video from what you have edited, make sure your video is in the project window, then click Share - Export with QuickTime.

However, this massively drained my Macbook Pro's battery, so I decided not to Export the video until I got home and charged my laptop. This also affected my Maya work as well, so I couldn't do much else other than written work this afternoon. I could have done practical work on the Macs at college, but I prefer using my Laptop to do practical work, and I had some catching up to do with my written work anyway.

I have liked how relaxed everything feels right now, despite having only two weeks left until I need to submit my work for my projects. I still understand that I still have quite a lot I still need to get done, but I feel that everything is under control. I just hope I keep on track of things, and don't wait to get things done.