Hi everyone, some of you know me - some of you don’t. If you don’t, I’m Tom Roberts - as this helpful slide is telling you. I’m also known as Zoom, a nickname that my friend’s wife bestowed upon me when she realised there is a kids cartoon series called ‘Tommy Zoom’. I’m now using Zoom as my illustrative name to further my creative presence. Anyway I digress, I’m here today to tell you about my experiences in Level 5, or if your in Level 4, letting you know what you can expect over the next year. In Level 5 I experienced, and you may feel also, three negative emotions - Fear, Anxiety and at times, Anger. These emotions were felt throughout the whole year, so theres that to look forward to for you if you’re in Level 4. The first few months specifically, I felt overwhelmed, exhausted and frustrated. This is fast moving year, and it’s easy for these feelings to get the better of you. But don’t worry - you will get used to it, as I did. Thats not to say these feelings will go away, you’ll just get used to the workload and managing more briefs than you thought you could. The first module that we tackled this year was 504: Process and Production. This was an interesting one as I dealt with animation and delved deeper into the process of screen printing. I’ll be honest I like screen printing - but as a process it’s a pain in the arse. You can spend all day printing and come away with one good print, as I experienced. I didn’t like that side of the module half as much as I expected to. On the flip side of that, I really enjoyed Animation. The only downside to it is that you have sit down and work for long periods of time on one thing, which is something I struggle to do, and is something I’ll be touching upon more later. 504 led into our show at Colours May Vary, where we displayed our screen prints. I was heading up the ‘Hang Team’ with Adam and I can tell you now - that was a stressful experience. Getting people’s work, arranging the work, bashing fingers with hammers. Stressful. However it was very rewarding and we put on a good show (I’m sure everyone will agree), although I don’t think I’ll want to so anything like that again for a while…What didn’t help me during the Colours May Vary hanging was the fact that I suffer from the winter blues. In February the days are dark and cold and I’m generally sad and angry with a dash of hopelessness too. The winter blues hit me hard this year but having recognised it as an issue, hopefully I’ll be able to prepare for it next year in Level 6. But anyway, moving on. The next big module was Context of Practise, a module that I love. I love the essay writing process and found that the synthesis of research whilst creating a final product really helped create an informed final outcome. For me this was based around the UK’s leading politicians living in the Big Brother House. I love reading about politics and ultimately this helped keep me vested in my essay writing. Additionally my research was helped by the General Election. You know, the thing where we pick a new head idiot to run the country. By looking at the work of Steve Bell and Martin Rawson among others I realised that most politicians look like muppets and used this within my work to reinforce the comedy. However, I would say I didn’t take advantage of this enough. During the CoP module I began to experiment more with digital drawing. This was inspired by Matt Taylors Big Heads skype. Matt uses a digital collage process which he then draws over in Photoshop. I adopted this process despite some comments about it lacking integrity. I find that drawing like this keeps my interest and allows me to sit and work for hours which, as noted earlier, is something I struggle to do. I developed this process further in 505: Applied Illustration. After digitally drawing the outlines of a page I then printed them off and inked them with fine liners. Now I did end up colouring these pages digitally but in the future I want to look into buying some nice watercolour printing stock to work on and see what happens. 505 was also great as it taught me about product, range and
distribution. How we can make a multitude of things from a single idea/product was a very interesting thing to tackle and certainly opened my eyes to how far my work could go. 505 additionally informed my PPP work where I began thinking of how I can advertise myself in different ways. I’ve created business cards, bookmarks and even a calendar about myself, in part due to what I learnt in 505. PPP has also helped me improve upon my professional and presentation skills (as you are currently experiencing). My improved presentational skill is my main take away from OUIL503: Responsive. The numerous presentations we had to do was frustrating, but effective - in my opinion. Responsive was also good at helping me manage a large workload (you have to work on 5 briefs minimum in Responsive). Because, you can never have too many briefs. And with that you may be wondering, ‘how did he survive Level 5 if theres so much to do?’ Well, here’s what I did: I slept. By that I mean I didn’t go to bed later than 10:30 on a school night at any point this year (save for one instance). I can’t stress how important sleep is to functioning well. Secondly, I didn’t stop working over Easter. This really got to me near the end of the year as I was exhausted, however its such a good feeling watching everyone stress out about their work while you're already working on the next thing. Finally, forward think. Realising that I couldn’t stop over Easter and also getting print bookings sorted earlier in the year helped me to no end. I booked sessions knowing when the deadlines were so I knew I could get my stuff printed with ease. My last piece of advice for going into Level 5 is this: it is tough, it is tiring, it is stressful - but you can do it if you manage your time effectively. Thank you. Are there any questions?