Work in the library has been going well for us. I feel like I have made a lot of progress on my drawing and animation skills while we have been working here and from our time in Villila Studios. Working with 3ds Max reminded me why I loved working with Blender so much. Once you finished creating the character and made sure the bones worked properly, it was very easy to animate the characters. The week working with 3-D models allowed me to practice creating walk cycles.
The time we spent with Adobe Animate made me realise that I enjoy working with colours and making sure they work well together. Working with Alan on the animation project gave me a better insight into group work and how to distribute tasks among a team. Thanks to practicing observational drawing in the library, I'm getting a lot more used to shading. This was something I never incorporated into my work beforehand. I have also improved a lot on my anatomy and poses. Overall I am really happy with what I have accomplished during my time here and I have found it to be very beneficial. -Seán
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In our third and last week here in Pori and I must say I will miss it. The experience has been rewarding, insightful and challenging, and I know I’ll come away with fond memories of my time here. I finished up with the funding proposal early in the week. I ended up spending a lot of time writing up aspects of the proposal only to find out that the online application form didn’t require a lot the information I had written about. This was frustrating, however spending a lot of time writing and refining the proposal challenged me and helped me to improve my writing skills, which I definitely needed. Today I was asked to proof read the English translation of a transcript that will be used as an audio tour for an upcoming exhibition. The audio tour will explain the history and development of the museum, and the exhibition will showcase the full collection of the museum. I was also asked if I would record the audio tour tomorrow in the studio. I am a little bit nervous about this, but it is also exciting to be part of the process in some way. I spent some time practicing speaking clearly and slowly – no easy feat for an Irish person. I also observed the team hanging some of the works for the exhibition, and was shown the exhibition plans that had been made using a computer program. There was a lot of discussion, measuring, adjusting and lifting among the staff. This was a great opportunity to see how an exhibition is developed and all the effort and thought put into the layout of the works. During the week I was asked if I would like to observe the Children’s Experiential Colour Workshops that are run by the Centre for Children’s Culture – Network for Children’s Culture in Satakunta. The workshops were developed at Pori Art Museum in 2003 and are held there during the week. They are visual art workshops designed for families with a baby and young children. The workshops progress from the exploring and observing of colours and light, to self-producing traces with specially formulated baby-friendly colour materials. The workshops offer the possibility of multifaceted interactions between a baby and an adult and the main goal isn’t achievement or efficiency, but sensing and experiencing.
Seeing how the group mentor interacted with the parents and babies, putting them at ease and keeping everything running smoothly was an excellent learning opportunity. It showed me that being approachable, open and encouraging was the best way to interact with groups. After the group was over I was able to help the mentor with clearing up and was able to ask her some questions about the development of the groups and their aims. She highlighted that having parent and child interact together in making art and exploring the possibilities it offers was an important aspect of the workshops. This got me thinking about the role of art in bringing people together, and for showing various ways of interacting with the world. I think it would be great if these workshops were available to parents and babies in Ireland. Some food for thought..... Our time working within Villila Studios is over and it's time to start our week of self-directed work. We learned a lot in Nakkila. The first week of 3D animation in 3D Max was incredibly beneficial, as it's a lot closer to the industry standard than what we'd usually use, and it's always good to have a wide knowledge of the programs. We learned how to model, add bones, animate. How to add life to a walk cycle with side-to-side and up-down movements, which is something I hadn't considered before and I think it's really going to help in my own work.
I really enjoyed working with 3D Max, and Harri informed us that it is free for students so it's certainly something I would like to work with again in the future, and perhaps my new go-to for all 3D projects. Our ventures into 2D were a little less enjoyable for me, as I found Adobe Animate to be too clunky to make anything actively pretty, but while I definitely think I'll be sticking with Toonboom, I still appreciate the opportunity to learn new things. I know It also gave Alan and Sean the opportunity to work as a team which is always a healthy challenge. So now it's time for us to take what we've learned and start working on our own for a while. We've set up shop in the Pori library, a well equipped building with plenty of desks, computers and power-points. It's made for an excellent work environment so far. Self-driven work can be tricky, so we've set out the weeks plan of working hours, set goals for ourselves, all to make sure we're staying focused and on target. I've decided to work on my storyboards right now for my animation project, but working away from home means I have to learn to deal with the limitations of only having one small laptop and no constant supply of tea. The storyboards are going well, but I definitely think home studio work is my preferred direction. My classmates have decided to work on observational drawings, a must for any animator, and the library is a fine place to do so with plenty of interiors and people to draw from. Karla. On Friday, Suvi had organised for us to visit the game design course at the University Centre of Pori. We were scheduled to meet our contact, Pauliina, in the main lobby of the university at 11.30am, but by now we have all mastered the art of arriving early, so while we waited in the lobby we were approached by a film student who asked if he could record us chatting for his film.
Shortly after, Pauliina found us and brought us on a short tour of the game design facilities, giving us some information on their history and what they do there. She then brought us to another lecturer who showed us the games they had been working on for the past two years. I was happy to see that their approach to teaching is very hands on much like GTI and revolves around a (applied learning) learning-by-doing concept. We were told that, like preproduction in animation, each project goes through a heavy research process. The tablet/mobile games they had been working on were very health and education focused, such as a children's game where you solve fractions to progress, in the hopes of making math a little easier, a memory game for the elderly that can adapt forward and back levels depending on your skill level, and a fitness game where you jog to move your character as you eat carrots to gain points and avoid chocolate that makes your character fat and difficult to manoeuvre. I was glad to hear that they collaborated with students at Villila Studios to make the character and background art, graphics, character animation and music. I was really impressed with their goals for collaborative effort. It was a short trip, but we learned a lot about the research process that goes into creating a game from concept to testing, and the values of outsourcing for parts that maybe aren't your own personal strengths, something every animator needs to keep in mind. hAt the moment I am working on one particular project at the museum. I was asked by the Head of Curation -Anni, to write a funding application for an upcoming contemporary art exhibition by Belgian artist Ana Torfs that will be held by the museum in September (www.poriartmuseum.fi/eng/exhibitions/tulevat.php).
I was delighted to be asked to work on the application, as I knew it would be a challenging but great learning opportunity. I had worked on proposals in a previous job, but not in the context of art so this was a new challenge for me. Writing the proposal was made difficult at the first hurdle as the Flemish arts funding body website was not overly forthcoming with the marking criteria and guidelines for the proposal. Anni and myself joked about how we thought the funding body wanted us to fail from the outset but after a lot of squinting at the screen with eyebrows raised we managed to find the guidelines. I’ve been spending some time getting my head around putting together the proposal in a specific format. It was only today that we were able to access the online application form, and I found it quite hard during the week working on the proposal and not being sure of the correct format. Mainly though I’ve been spending most of my time researching the artist and her work in order to put forward a strong enough rationale for granting funding for the exhibition. This has been the aspect I’ve found the most difficult. My writing is rusty and it’s been a while since I’ve tried to put together a proposal. The artist’s work itself is complex, and makes you think quite a bit about the topics she is highlighting with her work. I quite like this type of contemporary art however I've found it hard to summarise her work in a concise way. I am also aware that I don’t have much experience in this particular area and it is quite daunting writing an application of this sort – I don’t want to misrepresent the museum or the artist in any way, or mistakenly miss the scope of her work due to my own limited knowledge of contemporary art and writing skills. This concern is probably making me work at a slower rate than usual but probably better to err on the side of caution in this situation. While this has been an unnerving task, it has also allowed me to develop my knowledge of contemporary art, and has helped me to learn what is involved in writing art funding proposals. These are valuable skills that will really help me down the line when applying for museum internships back in Ireland. It has also helped me to develop my interpersonal skills as I had to discuss with the curator how much work she wanted me to complete on the application, and also organize meetings with her at a time that suited her schedule. I found this part difficult because I wasn’t sure of the best way to set up meetings. We share the same office but she was often quite busy and I didn’t feel comfortable interrupting her. The obvious answer here would have been to send an email but given that we could see each other I felt this was a bit awkward. All in all, the second week of placement has presented a new challenge that has helped me to learn more about myself and the way I approach this type of experience. I’ve enjoyed building new skills in writing funding proposals and developing my knowledge of contemporary art practice. It has shown me I have so much more to learn, and that I have an interest in doing so. Building relationships with members of staff has helped me to learn other people’s boundaries and preferred methods of communication, something I believe is invaluable in the workplace. I've added in some links to the resources I used for developing the layout of the proposal in case they may be of use/interest to anyone: VAI- Manual for visual artists: visualartists.ie/the-manual-a-survival-guide-for-visual-artists/presenting-your-work/preparing-proposals/ Curatorial Toolkit: mgnsw.org.au/media/uploads/files/Curatorial_Toolkit.pdf Today we continued on with the animation project we were assigned by starting work on the actual animation side of things. On the previous days we worked mainly on the colour scheme and composition of the scene. This was the easiest way of doing things given we were using Adobe Animate CC 2015, a new program for us. There are stark differences between this program and Toonboom Harmony of which we generally use back in GTI. Adobe is a more simplified program with a less extensive tool set but is just as capable as Toonboom. The system through which it works is slightly more roundabout than Toonboom, so acquainting ourselves with it took some time, but it was beneficial to us that we were able to learn a new program.
Once we felt we had learned the program well enough, we started animating the characters we had drawn in. We initially found animating in adobe to be challenging as we had expected it to work in a similar way to Toonboom given its similar user interface. Today we continued on our animation project. We were allowed to decide how to work on the project. Karla and Kilian decided to work on their own projects but Alan and I decided to work together. For our animation, we took inspiration from the trip that was organised today. As we were going to go skiing, we felt it would only make sense to base our animation on this. By the end of today we had finished the character designs we intend to use as well as the background for the animation itself. All that was left was for us to experience the activity for ourselves. We began by taking way too long to put on the gear that was provided to us. Once that sorted the REAL fun began.To paint a picture with words. After leaving the building where we were given our ski's, there was a small path, roughly 20 foot long to the beginner slopes. Having just put on our ski's, Alan and I made our way down this path, slowly and cautiously while Karla and Kilian were getting ready themselves. As it turns out, we couldn't even manage that much. Alan slid off the path, sideways, into a small bench before falling over at an astonishing 2 m/ph. I managed to follow his lead, failing in the exact same way as he did. We then awkwardly trekked on towards the baby slope. Once we arrived I tried to go up the lift to the top of the hill, only to fall over a few seconds on it. I nearly managed to make it to the top on my second attempt, I got off the lift too early though and I fell over again. I was nearly at the top so I was able to walk there. I was trying to learn how to turn and brake but unfortunately I started sliding down the side of the hill into a fence. I was clearly determined to ski so I trudged to the top again and I managed to go down the hill, naturally I fell over once more. At this point something occurred to me. At some point or another my phone must have fallen out of my pocket. So I had to look for my phone. Luckily my phone was a colour that could be seen easily and I remembered exactly where I fell each time. Following the unforgettable experience of skiing, Suvi had a treat for us. We had cold drinks and something to eat before we headed back to the hostel. All in all it was an enjoyable time and a great experience. -Seán Our first week in Pori ended on a high note- our 3D projects were modelled and animated nicely, and I for one was very happy with the new skills I had learned in our time. We've really settled in here and we know our way around. We've figured out the bus systems, we've found good places to eat (Petra's cafe is my current favourite for delicious cakes and hot chocolates, but Rax Buffet is a solid choice for all-you-can-eat pizza and wings), and I like to think we're all getting pretty comfortable.
It was a whole 3 degrees today and it felt like summer compared to the cold of last week, so we're starting this week off well. This morning, Harri gave us our project for the week; a 2D animation based on something from Finland. He showed us a few of the basics and techniques of Adobe Animate, another new program for us, and left us to it, as it's pretty straight forward. I've decided that for my own animation I'm going to take inspiration from one of my photos of Tampere as a background and have someone skating through the picture. My first day of the project went well I think. I've the background done and a few frames of the skating. We have until Thursday afternoon to finish this, with an evaluation on Friday, so should be plenty of time to get a nice, short animation out and rendered. I'm not so sure I enjoy this particular program as much but I am always happy to work with new things at least for a little while, and our tutors are very helpful when we need them. On top of all that, Suvi has promised to take us skiing tomorrow evening so we're in for a very exciting day and possibly a lot of dramatic falls. New experiences all round. - Karla We made it through a week of early mornings and snowy bus treks to the bus stop for Nakkila and we were ready for the weekend. Karla and I decided to go for a weekend trip to the nearby city of Tampere, while Jenny went to Helsinki. Tampere was a very different atmosphere to Pori, a lot bigger and busier, and incredibly colourful, especially at night. We were there for two days, so we had plenty of time to explore. The first day we mostly did some shopping on both the main street and the large shopping centre, Koskikeskus. We found a donut shop called Arnold's that does the best donuts and it turns out to be a chain of stores so you can find them all over Finland, delicious. For dinner, we went to Stefan's Steakhouse, which was in an old factory building overlooking the rapids in the middle of Tampere. Unfortunately we were too hungry to remember to take photos, so you'll just have to take my word that it was a lot of beautiful sights. The walk back to our hotel that night was filled with the bustling lights of the city, making for colourful photos and excellent material for our sketchbooks. - Our restaurant was definitely under that smoke stack somewhere. Lots of those smokestacks all around Tampere. On our second day in Tampere we didn't really have much of a plan beyond wandering, but we ended up heading to the Sarkanniemi area. During the summer it's a theme park of sorts and looks very exciting but unfortunately the rides don't open until April. But in the mean time it made for some great photos and a really nice walk. We came across a park of sorts on our way towards Sarkanniemi that we decided to explore. It was up a fairly sizable hill and there was some risky footing but we were glad we made it for the view. The park was filled with interesting statues and fountains. - Sarkanniemi Observation Tower & Park
Getting to the park was a little confusing, as we went to walk straight across before realising we were actually at the edge of a pier and even though it looked like solid ground, we were actually about to walk on the ocean! So after a quick detour we ended up at the base of the observation tower and went to the aquarium that's there, open all year round. There was a lot of really interesting stuff there, including a tank that had it's own little rainstorm every twenty minutes or so, and it was a really great day. All in all, Tampere and our first weekend in Finland were very enjoyable experiences. - Kilian. On Thursday we were shown how to use the program 3DS Max to animate our characters. We were tasked with doing a walk cycle for our characters. Once we finished the walk cycle, the first project would be done. On Friday, Saija evaluated the work of the other students. It was very interesting to see what the students were able to create using the program. On Monday we will be starting a new project. It'll be very interesting and beneficial and I can't wait to get started. Pori has a variety of nice Shops and cafe's. On Friday we ate at a lovely little cafe before having a wander around the town, looking in the shops, going through the shopping centre, acquainting ourselves with the area.
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Art + Animation 2016/17Jenny Grace Map of Pori |