Further Exploration

Book Exploration

Today we explored 'The Library'. When I was young I used to use a lot of books at school and my experience of them is heavy, bulky and stinky. Then when I started using internet I found that I could do the same stuff but faster and lighter, so I put books aside. Today when the lecturer told us about visiting the library to explore more subjects and open our minds to new ideas I had the same approach as before. I started to search for books.

To explore new ideas and design I think that the best thing is Nature. Insects for example look so alien to this world and has such different shapes and anatomy. I set a goal to find a book on insects. I searched the whole library and I couldn't find one, but at the last minute I found a small section about nature. There was an encyclopaedia about insects and I also noticed one about shells, which by first glance had very original and complicated structures. We borrowed the books and headed back to class and as soon as we set down and began to explore the book, our lecturer told us what is our first impression of using a book instead of the web. I quickly reply that it was very time consuming, but then she told me to think again about what I was saying. She then continued asking me if it was really more time consuming and added that in my hand I have a collection of carefully selected and professionally put together of information and photos. Evaluating her words, I realized that instead of browsing and filtering information and images, I had a lot of useful information at hand all specific to the subject.

Said that, it is still fast using the internet, but after today’s experience, in my opinion using them both is the best way to go.

While browsing through the book I encountered a lot of interesting creatures and shapes.

Figure 1: Insect 1

(A.Marshall, 2006)

Figure 2: Insect 2

(A.Marshall, 2006)

Figure 3: Shell 1

(Starosta & Senders, 2007)

Figure 4: Shell 2

(Starosta & Senders, 2007)

All of us got lost searching, taking pictures, and notes about different forms and shapes. Over all it was very interesting and helped appreciate books once again.

Summer Fight

As part of the lecture today we watched a movie (Anime) called ‘Summer Fight’. The story is not that appealing but the drawings and animation are incredible. I grew up watching old anime as ‘Lupin the 3rd’, ‘Dragon Ball’, ‘Sanpei’, ‘Ken il Guerriero’ and many others, which all of these had great animation. They managed to take out the expression of the character as needed trough out the episode either by exaggerations or including some icons as sweat drop or popping vein.

Figure 5: Sweat drop and popping veins

(Kincaid, 2011)

The drawings were also very well done. The amount of detail in very simple shaped characters and objects was incredible and all scenes where interesting to watch. Whilst keeping the scenes full of details, the shot is rendered in such a way that it keeps you focused on the subject or action.

The story was based on a social network where each user had his own custom avatar. There was a great variety of avatars and where all very different from each other. I think that it was very hard to create all of those different characters and not having them similar.

References

A.Marshall, S., 2006. Insects: Their Natural History and Diversity : with a Photographic Guide to Insects of Eastern North America. North America: Firefly Books.

Kincaid, C., 2011. Anime’s Visual Language. [Online] Available at: http://www.japanpowered.com/japan-culture/animes-visual-language [Accessed 25 October 2016].

Starosta, P. & Senders, J., 2007. Shells. s.l.:Firefly Books, 2007.