MD318 – Blog 6

Over the past two weeks the team has been adapting our project plan and format due to the pandemic. Of course, this is not an ideal situation but we are doing our best with what we have. Adobe recently made their applications free to download for all students. I was able to download Photoshop, Affecteffects and Media encoder so I could work away on the project. Thankfully, Lucy and Niamh were able to do the same. We have had to make some changes obviously not only to the end product but also the production process of this project. Our projection mapping plan had to be somewhat scrapped. The majority of the semester was spent working on design but also, researching and sourcing materials, locating a projector to use and a space to build the map. In a way, this preparation and multiple tests with the projector was for nothing. Even a key element of our design process has been lost – the Wacomb tablets. We had decided on a hand drawn style – hence the tablets were perfect for this. Since college has become remote, the team will not have access to any of the tablets in the college. Javad had planned to try posting it to me but the college campus has completely shut down, making this impossible. I don’t mean to sound pessimistic through this process but it has been a massive change for everyone and a period of uncertainty for us – What would our project become? Would we have to start from scratch?

Lucy, Niamh and I have had multiple meetings via Video chat on Teams, some with Javad, to create an alternative plan of action. Javad assured us that we wouldn’t have to lose the essence of this project if we were clever with our execution. Hence the Projection Map 2.0 plan was born. Through apps like Photoshop, Affecteffects and Maya, we could create a virtual presentation of what our project could have looked like if we had gotten the chance to physically build and present it. We could portray our ambition and plan in a virtual setting. Of course, this won’t be a walk in the park. Our team is separated and therefore spreading out the workload may become an issue. I have some basic experience with Affecteffects and I’m currently learning how to navigate Maya. Recently, on video calls with Javad it seems as though the work kept being redirected to me as I’m more familiar with the apps than Lucy and Niamh. This gradually started causing me stress and weight to pile up on my shoulders. I know the girls will collaborate on the design aspects of the map in Photoshop but it seemed as though the entire animation and 3D construction was being left to me. After expressing this to my team members, they completely understood where I was coming from and noted they wouldn’t have an issue learning the principles of Aftereffects to help out with the animation of this design. This has put my mind at ease however, I think it will be difficult to collaborate on the project as we cannot all work on the same document at the same time or be in the same room together to discuss. So, throughout the next few weeks while putting together our final version, I think it would be beneficial to have more Teams meetings. This way, for example, while one of us works on the photoshop design, we can share screens and be apart of the process. Visi-versa when working in Affecteffects or Maya.

We are planning to submit our beta version this evening which consists of – an image of the basic map design, an image of the information we want portrayed on the map and a short example animation. I will admit, these images could come across as too simple or rough to Jeneen and Javad. However, I hope they’ll appreciate that we have had to make many alterations in these few weeks and it still isn’t the end result! This project was never fully about the end result anyway, but about the massive learning curve we would face. We are not at the end of this process yet but we have already overcome many obstacles, adapting at the best rate we can.