Project Development Issues

A little not to my self of all that is needed.

Time management issues?
The big issue is managing my stress.  Things move more smoothly when you aren't freaking out.
Time to complete the story seems to be the major issue.  

My capstone has to compete with 4 other class. Fortunately I planned a head for this, and I tried to take classes that weren't project intensive.  Things like Tai' Chi (good stress management class), and Violin lessons which together take up 3 credit hours.   Also since I'm taking this Project Development class, it's just reinforcing what we already have to do in our Independent study.  The only class my capstone is competing with right now is Stop Motion Animation.

Skills needed to complete the project?
Some Creative Writing
How to use programs such as Photoshop, Corel Painter X,  and Illustrator 
Figure drawing skills
Digital Painting skills
Design skills
Photo manipulation skills
Color Theory 
Sequential narrative skills

Resources needed (people and technology/materials)?
Adobe Creative Suit 5
Corel Painter X
Wacom Tablet
*New Computer (Bought it at the beginning of the semester)
Business Cards
Water Colors/ Gouache paints
Chalk
Acrylics 
Micron Pens
Copic Markers (Maybe) 
*New Printer with Scanner
Books on figure drawing
Books on digital painting
Books on the art of comic book making
Herron Art Professor
New Media Sequential Narrative Professor
Possibly some set production...

Budget

Ugh, well let see... So far what I've spent
Macbook Pro:                                   $2,500.00  *Ouch*
Printer:  Kodak Printer                          100.00
Ink for Printer (when Ink runs out)         35.00
Adobe Creative Suit 5 (School brand)    20.00     
Corel Painter X                                       30.00
Comic Paper                                           30.00 
                                                        ---------------
                                                           $2,715.00     

There is the Gas expensive that haven't been totaled yet
Haven't checked into business cards yet
And I haven't thought out how much the whole presentation is going to cost me. 

Team issues (even if it is just you and your mentor, that forms a team)
Feedback on time might be an issue, for mentor and of teams.

Other issues
 I find that while I'm working this project I'm waiting on feedback for the go ahead from my mentor.  So I work on it as if I have the go ahead, probably to find out later changes have to be made and pages half to be scrapped.   Seems like an innovative use of time.

Mentor Profile

*Note this blog entry has changed several times, due changes I've made outside of class with current mentor.  I got a brilliant idea though as far as mentors, so humor please.

For class we had some questions we needed to answer about a secondary mentor.  See this is where it gets tricky, I'm currently working on my capstone. Well, last Friday on the 16th, after I talked to Powers he told me to stick with a comic.  Doing just a comic for capstone was okay with him.  But it had to be awesome...  I can do awesome!   This changed the role of the secondary mentor I was looking for though.   Instead of looking for those people who specialized in animation, because I already had a mentor who specialized in sequential narrative,  now I had to figure out what I was looking for in a secondary mentor.  As I was thinking about this, the dynamics of the presentation of my story changed too.

1. My capstone idea in 100 words or less.   So I got a new brilliant idea.  I'm going to create a sequential narrative where the emotion and message of the story is in the medium.  I know I'm referencing Marshall McLuhan, but I think it would be an interesting way to convey a fantasy story that is both filled with humor, horror, suspense, perhaps mystery, and coming of age aspects.  To have the main story told out right, with an underline story seen perhaps through the medium itself? I can't give you more than that at the moment, it's on the top of my head brewing like a volcano.
2. Four key components I was searching for in a mentor.  So what do I need as far as a secondary mentor?  Someone who can help me think inventively and help me stretch my mind.   Someone who has an art background.  Someone who doesn't mind the idea of mixing experimental ideas with traditional  ideas.  And lastly, someone that has a knack for dynamic narrations, sequential narrative, and dynamic characters.
3. Three potential mentors from the MAS faculty I would like to approach to discuss my capstone.   Also I need to "make sure one of them is someone from whom you have never taken a class," Like I said, humor me.  I am a woman on a mission!  And since I've already started on my capstone, I hope you don't mind if I took a slight detour from plans.  I already have Powers, and I already enlisted the help of Steve Mannhiemer, who is very good at encourage one to think outside the box.  And I also enlisted the help of one other, Anita Giddings.  She's actually from Herron.  I need her help with color theory, composition, and design.

Why I chose them, and what I know thus far:

• Powers is enthusiastic, adaptive, innovative, intuitive, and he asks a certain amount of boldness from his students. I think this is why his head is so big.  It's full of strange worlds, and lots of information. He knows what makes good sequential narrative, and how I can keep my readers turning the pages. 
• His area of expertise is 2D and 3D gaming (game creation), sequential narrative, narration in general, characters, virtual reality, environment, and creatures.
• He expects professional grade work, and will not let a student show a B level project.
• He's currently at his limit with students he is mentoring.

• Mannhiemer because his innovative, mind bending techniques help one reach beyond their potential, and your comfort zone.  I think he will help to enhance my
•  He's also a studio artist, a journalist, strategist
• Was once a faculty member at Herron.  Added bonus.
• Said he would help me as a Secondary Mentor

• Giddings is a professor I chose from the Herron school of art.  I chose her based what she says in her bio. "The content of my work deals with the systems that we use to order our environment. How we explain the phenomena of the natural world and what that has to say about our relationship to larger ideas interests me greatly. I try to depict the abstract ideas that are associated with concepts of time, natural events and how we visualized our relative physical position in the world. My visual tricks mimic the tricks we use to tell ourselves that we know what is going on."  I felt with her nurturing nature, her background (she's actually written books on painting techniques), she would be able to help me with color scheme, composition, and help the images in my background/foreground say more.

Together it works something like this:

Someone in New Media ---------> Someone New Media/Herron Art-----------> Someone Herron Art

Full New Media Perspective         Someone with a foot in each door             Full Herron Perspective 

I'm hoping this will give me the creative, innovative, profession, refined edge I'm looking for.  Plus cycling it through three people, and having it filter through critiques might give it an extra added boost?

This begs the question though... Can you have to many mentors? 

Secondary Mentor

So as the capstone process continues I'm beginning to see that more than one mentor isn't actually a bad idea.  It's something that wasn't even considered till Beth mentioned it.   Now I'm one of the few who currently has a mentor, Mr. Mathew Powers.   He is helping me with sequential narratives since the man is a genius.  But I want to knock this project out of the ball park, so I have a really good idea on which two people I would ask to be my secondary mentors.   I was thinking of Steve Mannheimer (New Media), and Anita Giddings (Herron).  Both have art backgrounds, and I choose Mannheimer for his thinking outside the box method (as mentioned in class by Beth), and Giddings because she can help bring my art to a new level.  Together with Powers who is like the King of comic book narrations,  it would be my Triforce awesomeness. Yea, I just said that.

People who probably wouldn't be a good candidate as my capstone mentor would be someone who specializes in web design, Sound composition, and the President of the United States because I don't think he has the time.  Kidding.  Sorry, these things become tedious to read after a while.

Peer Capstone Support Information.

Just a quick update. Today I'm suppose to identify the general category my capstone falls under.  Mine falls under sequential narrative, and animation.  But there is a lot preproduction involved, so I might fall into the video category as well.  I say this because there is script-work, story boards, animatics, art that needs to done, and in a sense you have to find actors to do some voice overs.  They're similar (somewhat) in the creative process, an I think a nice cross over between video and animation would be would be very helpful.

Class Discussion 8/30/11

Last class we talk about what a capstone is, and then we sort of discussed a successful capstone.  I'm not sure I understood the whole conversation of playing to our strengths.  The question was asked (something along the lines of), is playing to your strengths playing it safe?  Capstones is somewhat of an accumulations of the things we've learned in our high school career.  Perhaps its a bit difficult to shove everything we learned into into one project, and for the most part people will narrow down their projects so that it plays to their strengths and interests as well as showing what they've learned.  But I don't think it means I'm playing it safe.  My project is a comic.  Wrote one once in middle school, totally ripped off the plot from "Sailor Moon." Don't judge me... LOL  In any case it wasn't that great of comic.  It was more or less something between friends.  My strength lies in my art and my love for story telling, but I gotta tell ya, from what I've learned from Powers about the art of comic book story telling, I find myself very intimidated by project.  Not mention that my animation skills are a little bellow average.  Telling a story via comics is a bit different from telling a story via animation, and I am doing both. Though they seem similar.  I think I've already dug myself into a hole well before I've started.