Evaluation

Brief 

When first given the brief I was quite unsure of what I would get out of this assignment. It was exciting to know that I would be working on something as large as the grand masters facade but what would i really gain out of this project was yet to be seen.

Research

During the researching phase I learnt how massive these projects can get and how limitless the possibilities are, you can tell stories or create ads with a twist. I was kind of disheartened as we would probably never get anywhere near the caliber of some of the projections but I documented them anyway as most had really brilliant ideas that we might be able to implement in our own projection.

1st Team Concept

Next was the dreaded team work, team work in school is extremely difficult, after years of managing your own projects alone I find it hard to get tasks done with other people. Mostly because of my mentality and workflow, I still have to figure out some kinks in how I reason with people in my team to try and manage better the time and quality of work as a whole. As a team I found that most of the time we weren't on the same wave length and people including myself worked on aspects of the concepts seperatly and not having an idea of the bigger picture. I was somewhat appointed leader of the group which didn't help as I was not ready/wanting to manage a team so maybe if I was a little more prepared I would have been able to get everyone on board and work us as a single mind. At first we had 2 members who we had not even met yet which further elongated the "getting on the same wavelength process". I honestly believe that we came up with an amazing concept that would have been new and exciting bringing different art styles and provide a different perspective on the mundane / traditional way of how the Maltese work and view things. But ... we didn't manage to provide enough content for the concept to be fully understood in the awful presentation that we gave.  The presentation was by far the worst thing that happened to me in the entire 7 years of attending MCAST, I am used to presentations and the natural anxiety one gets in presenting but i'd rather have that with a solid concept opposed the broken one we had. Me and Jean ended up speaking as the others were to scared to speak. We ended up looking like a two of German puppets trying to form sentences using English words, needless to say things didn't go well. Also having 3 people of which I have no idea who they are looking quite disappointing and genuinely bored at me didn't help to calm the nerves. Anyway I hope I have learnt something from this event or else hopefully I will forget it forever.

These live briefs are always more of the same provide AMAZING and FREE products for the benefit of others in a very exploitative way limiting your creativity and learning aptitude. I am not bashing the final result, it was by far the best projection ever done by the MCAST students but i'm sure it could have been more different to say the least.

2nd Team Concept

The next stage was to gather myself from the previous failure and try to impress using my skill set. We were required to choose our best skills in order to be placed into our respective design department. There was a massive over load in people wanting to be in 2D design (this is actually where I feel I am strongest) so I decided to help the 3D department. I love 3D but have little experience in the field so as long as nothing too complicated came up I knew i could handle it. At first i felt I was a little left out of the loop and working on stuff I deemed necessary and it felt like i was repeating the same problem as the previous team exercise. Didn't want that to happen again so I took note to get involved with the team. This worked well and at some points i was managing the workflow as I felt we were lacking. I had no take in the direction of the concept but did have little control of some of the elements mainly the control panel. I would have wished to get more involved in the creation of the countdown concept as I would have had a better idea on how and what was happening from the star rather than pulling pieces together at a later stage. This team's work was far better than the last in terms of communication and quality of work as we were all on the same page relatively from the get go, the work progressed smoothly up until the end and everyone did their part. I would have loved to slot myself into another area after the my part was finished as it really got to me that other people where still working for the benefit of the whole team and it did make me feel a little guilty.

End result

The end result was the best projection this school has ever put up, the 2D and 3D elements where of great quality and the setting fit perfectly on the facade. On the other hand I do believe that we could have done more as I previously stated. The story could have been more collaborative and unique whilst exposing different art styles and animation techniques. I find this to be very annoying as after seeing what most of my classmates are capable of doing I am sure that as a whole we could have created something that we would have been remembered by, this has been the best of the same. The organizers wanted the same, a educative story with the same messages being conveyed and with them not having any design background their changes and ideas  were a little frustrating. I have no doubt that the people enjoyed it but when will they experience something new? When will we raise the bar? Hopefully things will change in the future where relevant and design oriented people our brought to judge our work rather than politically fueled board with hidden agendas. Our work was brought on many social networks and all yielded positive results some of which were only covered because there where influential people which kind of sucks but that is how the world works I guess. I wasn't present for the countdown but I did see the videos, all the lights coming off mobile phone recording gave me an awe sensation as we could see the full attention given to our work. The count down was the best part in my opinion because it was not influenced by anyone other than ourselves, we had creative control over all of it. It might be more of a pride thing but i will stand by my words.  Overall we did an amazing job based on what we had and our requirements it was an amazing experience to work with all these different people all in their designated fields all providing something different and sharing their knowledge to the benefit of the project.