OUIL406 Visual Communication - End of Module Evaluation

Leeds College of Art BA (Hons) ILLUSTRATION	Level	04
OUIL406 Visual Communication	Credits	20
End of Module Self Evaluation

NAME	Leah Haywood

1.  What have you learn about visual communication during this module and how effectively do you think you have applied these ideas?
Throughout this module I have learnt a variety of things about visual communication, the most significant being how to simplify an image in order to communicate a message effectively. I’ve really tried to focus on this idea of simplification throughout this module, it appealed to me as a way of communicating and from this I have produced outcomes for two briefs that follow along the ideas of simple imagery and shape. I have also learnt a lot about communicating emotions and feelings through character in the gif brief and how simply you can draw something in order for it to convey an emotion. I applied this by exhaustively drawing different expressions and emotions in my sketchbook and this in turn I feel helped me develop a stronger outcome for this brief. I have also learnt a lot about the importance of research and how you really need to know your subject matter in order to communicate it most effectively to an audience. I have applied this my continuously researching throughout a brief in order to be able to understand my subject better, this was in the form of the greetings from brief and the persons of note brief. The research really helped form a foundation to my work and my ideas and I think it also helped me develop my work and create a more well-rounded outcome at the end of the briefs.
2. What approaches to/ methods of image making have you developed and how have they informed your concept development process?
I’ve really been concentrating on shape throughout the majority of this module. From Visual Language, I learnt that shape can be used really effectively to communicate to people, to create finished outcomes and to help provide a basis for my illustration work. This informed my concept development progress as I was constantly trying to simplify things down in order to strip an image back to its bare essentials, this is evident in the greetings from brief and persons of note brief. I have also worked with vectors a lot in this module, something that at first I was terrified of due to a lack of experience with the software, but now I feel a lot more confident working with them. I think digitalising my work really informed the development process of my greetings from brief, I was constantly reflecting on my work and when I started to vectorise it, I was constantly evaluating and changing lines and shapes in order to produce a piece of work that was executed well. I also found it interesting to work with gifs and develop hand drawn pieces of work into a moving image on the computer. This is something I definitely want to work with again, I enjoyed the overall aesthetic of my hand-drawn gif a lot and think that with practice it could become something to I integrate into work across other modules.
3. What strengths can you identify in your work and how have/will you capitalise on these?
I think my main strength is my use of shape with different briefs of this module. I am looking forward to developing my work with shape over the coming years at university and truly think it’s one of the most valuable and informative strategies of image-making that I have learnt on the course so far. I am looking forward to exploring what you can do with shape and how you can manipulate it and combine it with other ways of working in order to produce professional outcomes. I think I capitalised on my use of shape in the final brief of this module, my work was entirely shape based with some line and I think that this helped communicate my message very clearly without their being a chunk of decoration thrown into it. I also think another one of my strengths has been my sketchbook practice. I really pushed myself in this module to draw exhaustively and build a better relationship with my sketchbook. This helped me a significant amount when it came to decision making, roughs, and final pieces and also allowed me to have a place where I could reflect and build on my work in a way that I haven’t managed to do as effectively as before. I used a bigger sketchbook for the back end of this module as well and I think that this has really helped me, I felt a lot less restricted when working in my sketchbook and I think the bigger size helped me develop my work a bit more and gave me a little more freedom to move around on the page. I’m looking forward to capitalising this in second year, I am starting to understand the importance of having a good relationship with your sketchbook and can see how this informs your practice and can be a starting point for stronger ideas and pieces of work.
4. What weaknesses can you identify in your work and how will you address these in the future?
I think one of my weaknesses was the quality of my work. Now it’s coming to the end of the year and I am reflecting on the work that I’ve done I’m finding it really hard to see any work that I’m proud of and I was really hoping that in this last module I’d be able to produce some outcomes that I would able to be proud of. I think what lets me down the most is my level of crafting. I feel like my work doesn’t look as good as it could do and that if I spent more time on it I would produce better outcomes. I will address this in the future by being a lot more careful with my crafting and trying to take more pride in my work in order to produce final pieces that have a high level of craft and that I can be proud of. I also think one of my weaknesses was not blogging as much as I should have done. I left a lot of my blogging till last minute and this is something I want to change going into second year. I feel that if I blogged regularly then I would be able to make better decisions in regard my work, and be able to reflect on what I have produced more effectively.
5. Identify five things that you will do differently next time and what do you expect to gain from doing these? 1) I would make sure that I am constantly reflecting and evaluating my work and progress in order to make more effective decisions. From this I expect to gain a better insight into my practice, a better understanding of illustration, and a more effective way of working and decision making. 2) I would do more artist research in order to allow myself to become more influenced by other creative and to allow myself to become more inspired. From this I expect to gain a broader knowledge of different practitioners and start to begin to be able to recognise what I am interested in and what kind of work I want to be making. 3) I would spend more time developing my work in order to produce a fully developed final outcome. From this I expect to gain practical skills and be able to produce work that is research, well rounded and well developed. 4) I would organise my time better in order to not have to rush any final pieces of work that I am producing. I feel this lets me down a lot and is an unhealthy habit of mine so to do this differently would allow me to have more time to craft final pieces and produce work that I am proud of and that is of a higher standard than the work I am producing now. 5) I would be broader with the range of materials and image making processes that I am using. From this I would gain a better understanding of my materials and tools and understand how to use these effectively in order to create a well developed and well presented piece of work.
6.How would you grade yourself on the following areas: (please indicate using an ‘x’)  5= excellent, 4 = very good, 3 = good, 2 = average, 1 = poor
	1	2	3	4	5
Attendance			x
Punctuality			x
Motivation				x
Commitment				x
Quantity of work produced				x
Quality of work produced			x
Contribution to the group			x
The evaluation of your work is an important part of the assessment criteria and represents a percentage of the overall grade. It is essential that you give yourself enough time to complete your written evaluation fully and with appropriate depth and level of self-reflection. If you have any questions relating to the self-evaluation process speak to a member of staff as soon as possible.

A copy of your end of module self evaluation should be posted to your studio practice blog. This should be the last post before the submission of work and will provide the starting point for the assessment process. Post a copy of your evaluation to your PPP blog as evidence of your own on going evaluation.

Notes