Review After the End of the First Project

I love UCA already. I have always been creative, so being in a place where I am free to be who I am and do what I love is incredible. Due to my disability, I was unable to be on site for the first few lessons, which saddened me greatly. I was still able to do some work from home though, so it was nice not being too far behind after a lot of difficulties at secondary school. The staff have all been so kind and accommodating, I feel accepted here.

I have really enjoyed learning new software while I have been here as well- I am eager to be able to use it at home too so that I can experiment and apply my new skills to my already existing passions. I feel that the skills I have learnt already will help me to improve some of my own personal work.

I enjoyed working with Premiere Pro- I found it relatively easy to use and understand. I feel I will probably benefit from those skills quite a lot. I do not see myself as a filmmaker exactly, but I would definitely enjoy making shorter videos, say 10 or 15 minutes long, either as a way to educate others on my passions, storytelling or both. Maybe I could finally make my dream of having a YouTube channel of my own come true with this. It is very exciting to think about all of the different possibilities.

The skills I learned while doing Foley Art would lend very well to this as well. If I were to go down the route of storytelling, then I could really bring my videos to the next level with sound effects that fit well with what I am trying to portray. They would fit even better than most of the videos I have seen and taken as inspiration, since I can record them specifically for the video with the skills I learned. Referencing back to Premiere Pro again, editing the sounds into the video when I tried it for the first time felt almost natural to me. I am not sure exactly why this is, but I do know that I had a lot of fun doing it. While I did run into a couple of snags while editing, I am glad I did. I know how to fix some of the more common problems I may have while doing this now and in my opinion that is one of the most useful skills to have. Fixing things.

Rotoscoping was a lot harder than I anticipated. It was still a lot of fun and it is still one of my main areas of interest. My passions lie within illustration and a want to learn animation among some other things, so rotoscoping was a great first step toward learning animation. Now that I have actually tried my hand at it, I feel I understand it a lot better and I can definitely appreciate the work that goes into animated shows for example. I can see why they have whole teams dedicated to animation with movies and shows, rather than just one person overseeing it all. It would be an inhuman workload just to make an episode of something like Avatar The Last Airbender for example. It is a guarantee that if I pursue this any further I will have to work with a team- while filming videos to try rotoscoping I was working with a team and we got on very well, so I am already building my teamwork skills.

From what I have been talking about, it would not seem like InDesign would be as useful as some of the other software I have learned so far. For those particular things, probably not. However, one of my other passions strays away from the digital realm. When I make my dolls, I have to draw custom faces, make hair and sew clothes specifically for that doll. It is a lot of work but a lot of fun. These dolls, if I keep improving the quality of them as my other skills improve, could be sold for very high prices. One way to raise the value of the dolls would be to include other things when I sell them. Things like photobooks. I love taking photographs of my finished dolls and have many folders on my computer containing those ‘photoshoots’. If I were to process those photoshoots into booklet form using InDesign, it would look very professional. That was one of my first thoughts when I held my first photobook in my hands- that my work actually looked professional. It really changed my outlook on my work at that point. It was like a lot of doors opened up for me.

When it comes to the kind of work I think I would enjoy doing the most, I feel I would thrive working for myself rather than for a big company- of course I would never close that door though. It has only been a matter of weeks since the course started, but my mindset has made a complete 180 degree turn towards the right direction in my opinion. I have gone from doubting my own work constantly, doubting my resolve towards this line of work and doubting myself to feeling confident in what I can do and confident in the direction I am going. I have the UCA to thank for this. I have my tutors to thank. I have my peers to thank. I nearly made a huge mistake and applied for the wrong course- I am so glad that I figured that out before it was too late.

In conclusion, I made the right choice in coming here and do not regret it in the slightest. I doubt I ever will.

I am looking forward to the rest of the course and learning even more new skills. It has already been a blast and I am sure it will continue to be.

Thank you for teaching me.