Ilona Devillard

Honestly I forgot when I applied for this program that I would be also learning a little bit from the New Media program. I think it will be fun and I’m excited to learn more.

I’m not sure what to write about because like every other DES student in this program just started. We’ve only done one module and some haven’t even taken a VME class yet. So too attempt to write 500 words for this weeks blog assignment I will also include my previous experience wit photography and film.

The most recent experience I have with “film” is when I had the animation class with Erik. It was fun and nice to dip my toes in the water of animation but its not for me. I found myself getting frustrated and overwhelmed by the end of the module because it just takes so long too animate. That’s the main reason I don’t like most things that have to do with film is because the creating/editing process is so long and I don’t have the patience for that. I feel like there is a difference between design projects that take a while vs film.

The last thing I’ll say about VME before I get into my previous experience/ knowledge on this topic I will mention that I talked to a VME student and we compared or classes. He talked about each one and what they are learning. I’d love to spend a week taking VME to get an even better understanding of the program.

I’d say my first exposure to the photo/film industry was when I was in seventh grade. In middle school we had to choose one elective pure trimester and I ended choosing photography once and video production twice. they we the highlight info my day. I would say I prefer photography over film because I feel like its easier in a way. Or less complex? Im not sure what it is.

I’ve also tried editing before with Premier Pro and to be honest is kind of a pain in the ass. Listen and watching the same thing over and over to get the right clip or whatever drives me crazy after a while. Have layers of sounds, clips, transitions, it’s just not for me. I was a freshman in high school when used premier pro for the first time. One of my projects that year was to create a podcast so I learned a lot about recording and editing on my own and it was fun but after some practice over the summer it didn’t stick. The passion left. However photography always stuck. I don’t really take pictures often but when my dad got a new camera for Christmas I borrowed it a few times and went out to take pictures. I also enjoy editing the photos in Lightroom.

Overall I don’t have much to say on VME because us DES students haven’t had much of an opportunity to discover the world of film and photography.

So for this week’s blog assignment, we are supposed to give 3 examples of us demonstrating leadership in the past either at work or school. I found this very difficult because I have very little work experience and I just graduated high school this June so I really had the think hard and I think I came up some thing to write about.

Earn Trust: Leaders listen attentively, speak candidly, and treat others respectfully. They are vocally self-critical, even when doing so is awkward or embarrassing. Leaders do not believe their or their team’s body odor smells of perfume. They benchmark themselves and their teams against the best.

I actually don’t have a specific example for this one but I resonate with it. I consider myself an attentive listener and I do my best to treat others with respect even if they do not reflect the same. At my high school we had advisories and we had all four grades in each one. The other students were automatically leaders by example for the younger ones because we had the most experience. I tried to help or give advice the anyone who needed it and I was also not afraid of putting some people in their place (respectfully) when they would interrupt or just be disrespectful to students or even the advisor.

Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit: Leaders are obligated to respectfully challenge decisions when they disagree, even when doing so is uncomfortable or exhausting. Leaders have conviction and are tenacious. They do not compromise for the sake of social cohesion. Once a decision is determined, they commit wholly.

Like I’ve said before ai have very little work experience so I can only really talk about who I am as a person and I am the type of person who can be super blunt and honest even to people who have a sense of authority like a professor because I believe that some people need to hear it as it is even if many don’t have the courage. I kinda of already mentioned the in the previous example.

Frugality: Accomplish more with less. Constraints breed resourcefulness, self-sufficiency and invention. There are no extra points for growing headcount, budget size, or fixed expense.

The only thing I can come up with for this is when in Freshman year me and 2 other students had the opportunity to paint a mural in our school and a big part of it was budgeting, resourceful and self-sufficiency. We did most of it ourselves with the help of our principle to get the school district’s approval. It was a big earning expiernce and a big achievement for freshman.

For the last one, I feel like Customer Obsession might be harder to adopt because it’s not something I think I have really had the opportunity to experience. However, I feel like most of these go hand in hand so I do think I can be good at most of these. With the expense of course.

Last year I had just started my Senior year of high school and I was looking for an internship because it was and still is a requirement to have an internship twice a week. Anyway, started asking around if anyone was friends with or knew any graphic designers that I could possible work with. I ended up asking my neighbor who lives across the street and she said no. To give a little more context I was looking to work with a graphic designer that year because I had started getting into graphic design my junior year and wanted to work with a professional to see if it was something I wanted to pursue in college.

After she said no she offered me the opportunity to illustrate a children’s book that she wrote back in her early college days. That’s when I had this urge to say yes even if I had never don’t character design before. In middle school I tried to get into that more cartoony/ manga style art but it never clicked for me so I pretty much started from zero knowledge of how I was even going to start.

My high school was very insistent on the Design Thinking method which is a 5 step system that helps with prototyping and managing bigger projects. So with that knowledge began doing some research and practiced character design just by copying what I saw online and be more comfortable with this style of drawing.

In the end, I Illustrated an entire children’s book from scratch using very little knowledge and experience at only 18 years. Unfortunately, it is not published but I have it saved and ready on my computer whenever my neighbor has the time to put it out into the world. This experience was amazing because I did work alongside a graphic designer who was a great help through the whole process and I am proud of myself for saying yes to an opportunity even if I didn’t know I could pull it off.

Below is the cover of the book in InDesign.

As an aspiring designer I definitely want to spend as much time being creative. If I had to put myself on the graph that Joe used I would place myself somewhere on the Lower Information Density. It is only the 4th week of school and I came here to figure out what my niche is gonna be so I can’t say wether I want to work for a specific audience or not because I just started. I like logo and icon design and I have illustrated a children book before but I can’t say for sure what I want to do after school. I want to be able to use Illustrator so I defiantly will want to have a job where I can used that software often. Now I know for a fact I do not want to do web design. I don’t want to see it, touch it, be near it, etc No offense to Erik 🙂

I did find it interesting when the women and Joe mentioned the benefits of working at a big company like Microsoft because of the benefits. In the moment I could see myself also working for a company like that but I can’t predict the future so I won’t put too much energy into the idea. I find it hard talking about the pros and cons because I don’t know what job I will have in the next couple years. Last year I did have an internship with a graphic designer and he said that a lot of people like him have their main job including other small sources of income that they get from making fonts/typography or icons that you can sell from on websites. I guess that is a pro and a con because if you dont work for a big company you might earn less and might have side hustles but for some that’s what they want.

I personally don’t really care at the moment. I just want to get through school, have a decant paying job after graduating and I will see where life takes me. Maybe this isn’t exactly east you are looking for as an answer but its my view on this topic.

Last Friday on October 7th, Paolo Tossolini, a man from Italy who owns a company called Tosolini Productions presented on AR/VR. He primarily works with clients who are new to this type of technology. He believes that research in technology is a competitive advantage. This means he tries new technology that comes out and he creates something out of it and puts it out on YouTube and or presents it to other companies to put it out there.

Tosolini brought up Prototyping and the benefits of documenting those steps. “You can use it for your portfolio” “Why is the portfolio important?” “Because that is what an employer looks at when they want to hire you” “they will ask what have you done, what are your skill sets and how do you demonstrate your skill sets?” These are quotes directly from Tosolini. The last thing he mentioned about prototyping is the fact that when you show a client your prototypes it builds a sense of trust since you get to show your understanding of the project.

The rest of the time he showed us a few of his projects/ videos from his YouTube channel and explained some of the process, the types of clients he works with and why he likes to work with AR/VR.

Above is a short 5-second video I created in Adobe After Effects. It’s very short and sweet but I think it resembles my experience so far at the program so far. Let me explain just in case you need some more clarification. So I chose After Effects because it is the class I have been taking for New Media.

Secondly, I chose the words “Mixed Emotions” because at the moment I have had some ups and downs. I have enjoyed getting to know my classmates, working on projects together, making new friends, and working on projects that interest me. However, I did have one day where I was overwhelmed and started panicking a little bit due to the amount of work and the fact that I was unsure about what I was supposed to do. An example of that would be the blog. Thankfully I had a second-year student give me some guidance which I greatly appreciated.

Thirdly, I chose the color green for the text because it is a relatively neutral color. Neither happy, sad, mad, etc.

The last two things I want to bring up about this short video are the chaos of the letters and the short audio I added. Obviously, I am not as skilled as I would like to be when it comes to animation but besides that, I like how playful the letters move across the screen because I think it demonstrates how fun but chaotic the amount of work I have been doing so far. As for the audio clip, I added it kind of goes along with the playfulness of the animation. It reminds me of an old-school game.

In conclusion, these past 3 weeks I feel pretty good with a hint of stress but everyone needs a little bit of stress. It makes life more interesting I guess you could say. I am looking forward to writing about my weeks in this blog because I will get to tract and see how much I learn and evolved as a person for the next 2 years.

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