A Fitting End to a Wonderful School Year.
School has always been about getting up really early, working on homework, doing some projects here and there, and stressing about tests; however e9 has changed that perspective for me. This class was not about what grade your getting or turning in homework or acing a test. This was a class about new experiences and learning what I want to learn. I have never been glad to have a project in a class before this year and that really is why I think this course is the right one for me. I constantly am wanting to push myself and say "Just a little longer" or "Don't stop keep going.". The feeling of working hard on something and doing your best to improve and then seeing that you have improved is one of my favorite feelings, and this is where e-Comm delivers.
My Groups 4th Quarter Project.
The project that everyone enrolled in e9 was assigned was to come up with a product, develop a logo and graphics for that product, create an ad to demonstrate and show off your product, a 3d and 2d animation and a website that would guide your presentation by organizing all of your thoughts into one place. This was a enormous mountain that we would have to climb since it was the most daunting and large scale project any of us had ever done for school. In the sections below I will describe in detail how each part of our product was made.
Graphics and Logo Design.
Our concept for the product was a pen that would replace all of your markers and pens because it adapts to any color around you using color scanning technology. After that step we wanted to through our logo design that it was interesting, neat, and colorful. We decided to tackle the typography first. In the "WonderPen" Logo you can see the pen under the W. We mainly used this for animation purposes but it also fit well as a graphic. The "Pen" in the words "Wonder" and "Pen" has been integrated into the end of "Wonder" making it look intriguing and it makes a first eye look twice to see what is really going on in the graphic. The process we went through to get these designs was incredibly tedious since we had to think of a way to make the words "Wonder Pen" look interesting. This was made even more difficult since none of us had really done anything in terms of typography. However that just made the learning experience even greater since we would take more interest in it because of our lack of knowledge about it. For example you always want all of your lower case letters in typography to hit the same top and bottom point to make the design look as even as possible. Some of the feed back about our logo was that, at first, the logo just looked flat out confusing. It was to the point that our classmates had to ask what some things were and after we explained it they still didn't understand completely. This made us need to completely rethink the logo to make it simpler and easier for someone to look at and immediately identify what it meant. I believe that our graphic designs and logos are pretty strong but we could have been much better. One thing that I would like to fix is the lower case letters in the "WonderPen" logo to make them all even.
Animations.
Our animations, in my opinion, were probably our strongest aspect. The animations we created were very good, not alone, but in the context they were used in. The 2d animation is the pen going into the W and filling the words "Wonder Pen" with color. This showed the viewers of the project that our product was about color and pens. The 3d animation was also very strong since it demonstrated the environment the pen would be used in and how it looked. I am personally going to study animation in my e-Comm course next year so this was a very important part of the project for me. This natural interest made me want to see how I could make the 3d animation look better since I was one of the two people working on it. I learned that creating 3d models is about getting down to the nitty gritty details and making everything in the model of the 3d animation look like it fits. I was the person who developed the pen in the 3d animation and I think it could have been much better. My main problem with my portion was that I had to create the pen from scratch meaning I had no references to go back to. This made me have to experiment and it overall could have looked much better if I had an idea of what to do going into it. I didn't receive any feedback on the animations surprisingly but it was mostly because we were short of time.
Commercial.
The commercial was very good and fun to work on. I was one of the main people who wrote the story board and script for the commercial and I really was focused on what we wanted the "Wonder Pen" to do as a product, make your art better and more efficient. In the commercial Paige is struggling with her art and suddenly the "Wonder Pen" is introduced and makes the art much better. Its simple and effective. The only real problem I had with the commercial is the setting. The setting of the commercial was very cramped and didn't allow us to work to our full potential. After we created the story board and prepared everything the only real change to the commercial was the editing and that was a couple of video filter changes and music being added. Again we were unable to get feedback since we did not have enough time.
WebSite.
Ok. This was my time to shine. My group members in the past had asked me for help in some of the other web design projects so they basically automatically assigned me to do the website. I was really wanting to show how good I was and test myself in my ability to code and design a website. There was a guide. I didn't use it. I didn't use the guide since I was already confidant in my skills that I just saw what I needed to put on the website and then I was off doing it myself. One problem I had while doing the website was that I really did not enjoy our color scheme that my team had decided upon and how it looked with the website. I wanted to change it so bad because I thought it looked unnaturally but my team insisted that we keep the color scheme since everything else was in that theme. Some of the feed back that I had received was mostly me missing a couple of things and I did add them but besides that the only real challenge I faced with this part was the pictures. The pictures made me want to rip my hair out. The problem with the pictures is that They would NOT want to move no matter what I did. I tried moving them in live and design view, nothing, I tried cutting and pasting the code in a different location, didn't do what I wanted them to do. I eventually just googled how to move them and that was that.
Strengths and Weaknesses as an e-Comm Student.
A lot of e-Comm is based off of working as a team to find out everyones strengths and weaknesses and using each group member to their fullest potential so in e9 I discovered a couple of strengths and weaknesses I had.
Strengths
A couple of my strengths while working with my group were, making sure everyone is on the same page, trying to get a clear group view, and overall making the group work as fluid as possible. I feel that these skills I demonstrated during e9 make me a valuable team member that is concerned mostly about the team as a whole. Whenever we would make a decision I would always make sure everyone in the group was ok with it and if not I would want to here their suggestion because it could possibly be better then our original idea.
Weaknesses
A couple of my weaknesses while working with my group include, getting ahead, not being focused, and needing to be more fluid. Im the kind of guy who always wants a plan. I always want a plan if I'm doing anything. This could be anything from chores to projects, and if anything diverges with that plan I get kind of upset. This is something I have been working on for a while now and I am trying to improve.
In Summary.
This year was a blast. This program has been interesting since the day I set foot in the school and I don't see any end of my interest in sight. This program really focuses on enabling a student to have freedom in the program and lets them do just about anything. My favorite part of this semester would probably be my friends that I have made. This class has really helped me open up to new people and I some of the friendships that I have made are going to be long lasting. If I would change something about the second semester it would probably have to be to give more time for the 4th quarter project to allow the students to really flourish in what they are interested in.
Final Thoughts.
e-Comm. is not a class about sitting through lecture that you only care about for your grade. Its about taking interest in something you love and pursuing it. Its about letting the student discover what they can do not a class about what they can't do. e-Comm is about us and not the grade (Im not saying you can fail and you will be fine), and that's why I like it so much.
