the evolution of Wood Wharf

Sketch up, photoshop and quark express..... Woodwharf evolution. It has a bit of a retro feel with the font and branding as I have always associated Canary Wharf with Gotham City......

 Wood Wharf 2 
quickly bolted together raw unfinished work for crit feedback

Wood Wharf 3
Hanging for final crit before competition submission

Wood Wharf 4
A couple of tweaks incorporating feedback

Deadlines

Monday 5th was a crucial day it was a day that we were presenting our survey book and it was the day that I was also delivering my final garden history presentation on "Jellicoe and the Subconscious".  It was lovely that when I faced the audience that I noticed a number of people, Julia, Phil and Nathalie were smiling back and it really helped. (thank you guys if you read this)  Also reading some blogs that people who have stepped out of their comfort zone in presenting was very encouraging.

Friday 2nd I had my presentation on my dissertation and I had a meeting with Duncan Goodwin to get some more facts on Urban Heat Islands.  I found him very approachable and informative and I felt it was a very productive meeting. Though I left with more work. I have a fascination with pollarded London Planes and have been taking pictures of them over the years. (okay buy me an anorak)

Wednesday 30th found out the my map was staying in.

Tuesday 29th Uploaded final group document

Monday 28 Nov Team Presentation.  The presenters did a great job but the crit was tough. I have to say that I thoroughly admired Lissy for dealing with her bike breaking down at the blackwall tunnel, fixing it and then giving a brilliant presentation on Constructionism then going on and then delivering a presentation on precedents!

Sun 27th Nov Finished final section of group document worked till early hours and got less than four hours sleep. (bloody map! there has to be a better approach)

Friday 25 Nov submission of first draft on my dissertation.

So while I wait for the feedback on my dissertation,  its time to catch up on the illustrative notebook and work on my Eastbourne masterplan. I really need to do more reading and sketching.  I found it pretty tough going as I have been doing course work putting in long hours non-stop for weeks and I have given my very best. Though i am unsure if I can physically maintain this pace over a longer period. Its true I learnt a lot and my computer skills have moved on quite a bit in Sketchup, Photoshop and I can now add Indesign with a better understanding of graphic design composition...

The holy grail: genius loci and a doner kebab!

The last couple of days have gone in a blur.  Friday there was the presentation rehearsals.  I did the timing.  The team had done a lot of work compiling and consolidating vast amounts of data and still awaiting some sections. 

Amongst all this we looked for the meaning of genius loci and listened to various pieces of music searching  for the embodiment of Eastbourne.

I didnt leave uni till 9pm.    I put heart and soul into my section. Thinking of what Jamie said about limiting time. I feel maybe I need a better balance. However it is difficult to restrict the time when you are learning. I have racked up stupid hours on both woodwharf and eastbourne. 

Its no joke without a car, thankfully Nick dropped me to the high street.  I didnt like Eltham Station one bit.  The journey seem to take forever. I hadnt ate much, so faced with a long walk and no food in the fridge with only a chip shop enroute; I seriously contemplated a kebab....
  

Eastbourne and everything else

 Ok now to wrap up Eastbourne.  I submitted in my piece of spatial character. I had a good chat with Paul who will be presenting this section, along with landscape character, materiality and flora and fauna.  I had thought I was 80% finished with Eastbourne until I spoke to Paula.  Ok so I need to do a bit more and it will push other stuff back further again.

Julia suggested that I introduce a bit of sketching into my portfolio.  So I have started to make more of an effort in that direction

Wood Wharf III - the final cut and many problems

So happy with my work I wanted to get RID of it before it took OVER my life.

My Problem
As I pulled together the project on quarkexpress I was restricted to my mac at home.  My usendit for some reason wouldnt send and to cap it all my quarkexpress file exported to a whopping 240MB PDF format from a 10.4MB file!

I managed to download adobe acrobat on to my laptop.  although  after the adobe treatment it was reading as a smaller file on my computer but it was been treated by my email servers as if it was not compressed and was far too large to send.    So  now I thought I will have to hand deliver it

3 CDs later - they were so slow opening and reading the files I thought this is not going to work, whos going to wait 5-10mins when they have hundreds to view.  I went back in again to quark and managed to compress it to a baby 6 MB without loss of quality.

So at 6.21 today I pressed the SEND button and said au revoir to Canary Wharf and bonjour to Eastbourne...

Wood Wharf II - the last week

So I ended up putting in the  hours to get it finished.  I was quite pleased with the result and what I managed to do and actually I started to feel like a designer for the first time. 

Although I had "finished" I went through my submission with Paula and had a list of tweaks. I had resolved there was no way I was going to do any touch up before submission that perhaps if time I could do before handing in my submission in next month.  But....

...me being me couldnt let it go knowing that I could improve it so I spent today tweaking. Then once I had that done I spent hours trying to save it, reduce it and send it.

Wood Wharf I - the last 2 weeks

Last Monday I got pretty frustrated with Wood Wharf.

A technical brief for an ideas competition.  I would have preferred to do something arty but felt I had to adhere to the brief.  I dont know how one could deliver a collage and still deliver the brief.

So I went through the technical route and built the model to scale in sketchup - very time consuming.  Anway in the end it was a case of I started so I'll finish ...

As a means to the end, I  bolted the main raw unfinished criteria together for my first crit as I wanted to find out what I needed to do.  The output didnt reflect the input, but how could it be anything else at this stage?

Eastbourne Corrected Photos

First retouch attempt...

photoshop at night

First attempt at night-time shot.  I enjoyed all the rubbing out! 

Eastbourne

 The air was blue in Eastbourne when I hit the white balance off my shiny new camera. Shame such nice pictures....

rendering

Photoshopped!

Painting with Photoshop

Yes Jamie it did lead to hours of fun...

Painting (or a bit of slap)

Blending (a lot of slap)
 

Splashes and Blots with Indian Ink

I spent a couple of hours experimenting with ink blots.  I started off trying to get the ink onto the paper in splashes.  I drew 2 squares in my note book and had a little play with a few colours.

Encouraged, I then I looked up about blots.  Using watercolour and standard paper, I tried out different techniques.  I hadnt anything to eject the ink out so I pulled apart a soap dispenser and used the hose.  I then blew the ink onto the paper. I then tried folding for a symmetrical blot and not folding, to see the effects.

 I quite like ink so random....

Colour Swatches

Originals scanned at Uni.

The vibrancy of the Pro marker colours are markedly duller in comparison to the scanned version.  I need to print them out to see how going through another process effects the colour.  Interestingly the difference is less with the water colour pencils.  Perhaps its because the pencil colours are more subdued to begin with.

ProMarkers

Water Colour Pencils

Dynamic Composition Task - MOOvement

RuNNeR by MaRi

I had issues trying to get this image smaller, its was far too big for the blogsite it just would not upload.  So i heres a trick. I uploaded it onto skydrive first which reduced the size  and  then uploaded it on to  blogger!  Simple.  Well if that didnt work the other options were scan a print out or print screen.

Anyway I love it - is that so immodest? I can see my model climbing out of its boundaries....  Still I spent far too much time on it

not so quick draw

4 of the 8 quick 2 minute sketches which took me more than 2 minutes.  Contrasted same image twice to see difference results with various media.

I drew this from a random photo and purposely went over my mistakes instead of my usual scrapping and starting again.  I then scanned in colour and b/w.

 

God knows what happened to the other 2 sketches (i am sure we did 8) anyway pretty awful results.  Lots of unnecessary lines. A lot to do....

Blade Runner

I wanted to create a narrative to show my model on the move.  A modern day industrial mechanised model escaping to a more idylic time, coming to rest in the final pastoral scene.

Played with filters and opacity.  Relatively quick as it seem to take direction itself.  I printed and adjusted as I went along.

Play time

 Experimenting with lines, scan settings, shading to give life,  mood,  and movement.

Paper Models

Complexity

Touching, Texture & Contrast

 

Symmetry, Ugliness & Elegance

Puncture Dynamic & Planar