Avatar Reflection/evaluation

Creative Media Yr 9 - Photoshop – Term 01 2011

Mr Andrews

Avatar Reflection/evaluation:

· Describe any problems or difficulties you encountered during the creation and editing of your avatar. These may include; technical difficulties, corrupt or missing files, knowledge of Photoshop tools issues. etc;

I didn't encounter many problems during the creation of my avatar, it was all fairly straightforward, but I did find it hard to find an appropriate image for my Avatar - I wasted a week or two in looking for one. One complication did arise on the Friday in the second last week of school. In that lesson I had been saving my work throughout the lesson, not realising that Julia had taken my USB and my Avatar had been saving to the documents folder. As a result, I managed to lose a lessons work, in which I had experiment with the blending modes of my layers and techniques for creating gills because my avatar is an underwater creature. Fortunately though, I borrowed out a laptop for the weekend and managed to complete both my first and my second avatar over the weekend - it only took a while longer than I had planned. I also succeeding in getting my blog up to date and post the stages of creating and editing my avatar, a feat which I am very proud of.

· Explain whether your planning and organisation (of ideas, files, inspiration) helped during the technical creation;

My planning and organisation, which included images of other avatars and ideas for mine, as well as the character profile sheet, did help me during the creation of my avatar. It helped me to work fast and efficiently and build this really great, strong character like I had imagined. The planning really helped me to bring my dreams about this avatar to life, to organise my thoughts, and work efficiently this term. The planning also helped me to keep moving forward - not once did I have to completely undo something because I didn't like the way it looked or because it didn't suit my avatar's character.

· Discuss whether you made effective use of the provided profile template to organise and prepare the required image assets and assist in the creative decision making process;

I believe that I did make effective use of the provided profile template because I completely filled it out in a way that helped me to organise my thoughts and used it to succeed in creating and avatar that perfectly matched my ideas, notes and planning.

· Clarify any time-management issues you encountered during the process and describe the steps you implemented to improve in this area;

I didn't really encounter many time management problems but, as I mentioned before, for the occasion when I lost a lesson's work. This only slightly set me back, and I still managed to complete both my avatars and pretty much all of my blog on the weekend. Another slight problem in terms of time management that I did have arose when my home internet stopped working on wednesday and is currently not working. Fortunately, I managed to finish my blog by going to Tory's house, which just meant I didn't get to finish it on Wednesday as I had planned.

· Discuss whether you undertook adequate and detailed reflection to throughout your project. Have you provided enough evidence to support your work? (Look back at your blogs/journals and think about whether it looks like a whole terms worth of work);

Yes, I do believe that I undertook adequate and detailed reflection throughout the creation of my avatar. I have posted reflections of all my work in class, as well as all the stages of both my avatars. In this I recorded each step I took and tool I used, I tried to put in as much detail, and I believe that the end result does look like a whole term's work.

· List any skills, techniques or tricks you have discovered during the project.

During this project I learnt many skills techniques, and tricks in Photoshop. Mr Andrews taught us many shortcuts so that we could work faster and more efficiently. Some of the skills and tools I learnt include the burn tool, the spot healing tool, masks, the blending modes of layers, and many more. This term I really extended and expanded what was previous a limited knowledge of Photoshop, thanks to Mr Andrews.

Discuss your feelings about the Avatar task:

· Are you satisfied with the final result?

Yes, I am very satisfied with my final avatars because they look pretty much exactly like I had first imagined and it is so great that they are finally finished.

· Would like to change any aspects of your avatar?

No, I would not change and aspects of my avatar because there is not anything that I can think of to change in them and I already believe that they have reached their full potential.

· If you could start the project again what would you do differently?

If I could start this project again, I wouldn't do much differently, except that I would complete a few more experiments and tutorials in photoshop to put on my blog, because I didn't really complete and of those.

· Are you pleased with the progress you have made in using Photoshop?

Yes, I am pleased with the progress I have made in using Photoshop because I now know what pretty much all the tools in Photoshop can do and have managed to complete numerous this that I would not have believed possible. I can effectively use tool to manipulate and experiment with images to create weird and wonderful and awesome images and I am very pleased with this.