The freshers (1. years) has moved in, and the campus filled with people. Approx. 1000 people live on the campus. In the school hours over 4000 people wander around the campus, finding the next class, getting fresh air or general socializing. Though I don't really get to see the busy hours, cause I'm not on this campus. I'm on the Glyntaff campus, which is across the valley just 20 minutes walking.
Along with the freshers start, the school starts as well. Or the introduction of the tutors, classmates, courses, and so on. Our introduction with the tutors was pretty fun. The tutors on the animation courses aren't as normal lectures. They all have a background in the industry, and therefore they haven't gotten the "traditional" education. This causes them to be a bit more relaxed in their tutoring.
My timetable is pretty filled compared to other courses on the University. We have school hours from 09:30 to 16:00 every day. This is because we have a lot of practical time, where we work on projects and generally practising. The modules that we are going to cover is very planned out, and it looks nice so far. They have build the course up so you a good foundation in life-drawings and understanding of media. The course is not without any "text work". We'll have to hand in essays, which f.ex. could be an analysis of a movie. Just so people don't think that the course is all practical and no theoretical work.
Our first assignment was to make a series of animations with the characters from the game "Pacman". In the animations we had to cover; acceleration, deceleration, change of direction, showing different of weight and characterisation and emotions. And here's some of the stuff I made.
The "Pacman" assignment was to be handed in Friday, and then the tutor are going to examine the animations over the weekend. Tomorrow (Monday) we will have our first critique. So for the first time my life I'm looking for to a Monday..
We also got our first essay brief in Contextual Studies (understanding of media). We have to take 40-60 seconds of an animation, film or computer game, and analyse it. The essay has to be 1500 words long, which at the current moment seems very long for me.
The first week of school also brought on the first Visual studies class, which basically is life drawing. The tutor there seems all right, he definitely wants us to be good and he tries to motivate us as much as possible.
Besides the first week of school not much else has happened. Was out in Cardiff yesterday, which was actually really fun. There was a rugby match on in the stadium; New Zealand v. France. Didn't see the match, but heard it was a good game with a close win to France; 18-20. When there is a rugby match on, the streets are filled with fans and that gives the city a good atmosphere.
That was the words from the last two weeks, hope you enjoyed the little reading.
