Guest speakers- Musion, Southpaw, Cream-Club

The first speakers of the day were Dan Harold, Creative Services Director, and Lee Probert, Creative Technologist at Southpaw. They are a company located in Tunbridge Wales which is closed to home so this furthered my interest. They gave a really professional presentation that conveyed the operations of their company clearly. They showed some of the big companies which they have as clients such as Dunkin Doughnuts, Honda and Callaway Golf which I felt was really impressive. They showed us one of there projects which I felt was really individual and I hadn't seen before it was for their clients Dunken Doughnuts and it was to make a randomised list of doughnuts to collect which I thought was great.

 The next speakers were Natalie Thatcher, Animation Team Leader at Cream-Club. Cream-club conveyed that they were a company who gave technological tools to estate agents in  local areas and try to make them the best in that area. It was a clever idea as it really did create a new way to sell houses instead of the way everyone is selling their houses in the same way so really sets them apart as a company that uses these tools. All of the colleagues at the company where recent graduates so I feel there would be an amazing atmosphere and working their would be a great experience and a chance to meet some interesting intellectual people. The tools would need film and animation so it was clear that doing an intern ship there these are skills which i have and which would allow me to settle in well at the company. However they then said at the end of the speech that they were not looking for interns however was an interesting speech and was good to learn about the working of this unique company.









The final speaker was from Ian O’Connell, Director, and Roisin Griffin, Production Manager and Producer at Musion.  They were a company that make 3D holograms of famous people. They even scale the holograms down to a smaller size so that they can perform at smaller venues from 1,000 up and then for stadiums with 50,000 they can scale them up to create a huge performance for everyone to see. They showed us some of there holograms performing and they were amazing I couldn't believe how real it looked. They said they had became most popular from there holograms of Michael Jackson and Tupac which I felt was so cool. They didn't say anything about taking on interns of placements which I was disappointed about as they would be such an interesting company to work for.

Visual effects- lecture 2

Today's lecture was on visual effects effectively it was a detailed portray of what pre-production, production and post-production infers. We were shown different processes that go within these element and who is behind doing this process. I felt that there were allot of interesting skills that go into these processes I felt that how the 3D modelling was implemented was very interesting and as its a personal interest of mine and I will research more into this subject in my spare time.

The lecture really just went through step by step of every little element in the process and its outcome. However I felt the detail that went into explaining the visual effects was interesting and I learnt allot. It was a productive lecture.

Guest speakers- Holiday Xtras, Nintendo

The first speaker we had was Simon Wood, Technology Director, Holiday Xtras. This was a very influential speech as he spoke allot about the opportunities provided at the company and the learning opportunities which are provided. I was very interested as the role sounds very designed base and features allot of skills that I am using daily at University. I am also personally familiar with the company so this gave me further interest  into following up the speech and aiming  for this placement. Overall it was interesting and I feel I learnt more about what the company does and opportunities it provides.





The second guest speaker was Kieran Barton who was a Kent student on placement with Nintendo last year in Germany. It was a really interesting speech as he went into allot of detail into his work that he produced in the year and explained that he had to spend hours a day playing Animal crossing in order to get some of the footage he needed to implement his poster/ game designs for Nintendo. It was also interesting as he elaborated on his transition to moving to Germany and was enthusiastic towards us to make the choice to move abroad due to the new experience and chance to learn a new language. It really opened my eyes to what experience I could have by working abroad and has defiantly influenced me to look into game design as a placement.

Feedback of presentation

Reviewing the presentation that it wasn't our best performance. There was a bit of confusion between us to what the product actually was and how we would make it unique to others. To improve on this in our future presentation we are going to run through the project step by step and make sure everyone has the same understanding of the project. We also hadn't looked into cost enough as other teams had a clear understanding of pricing however we were unsure. however we discusser after and realised that we should have priced it per pupil that used the product.

I feel that my presentation skills are improving each week and that my speaking skills are becoming clearer and more confident.

Preperation for presentation - Bestoke business

For this weeks brief we have to make a bespoke web design business that needs to be innovative and unique.
The first thing we need to do is to assign each other roles for the project so we all are clear to what we are doing individually. To assign each other roles were going to have to research similar companies in order to understand which roles are necessary to produce such a business. Also we need to find out what services these similar business are providing and try to think of a way to do something unique to these business.
We have decide to focus more on the education sector where we can implement web services into schools and education. The product that we wish to produce is a school tracker where you can select the subject that you are studying and add clear evidence that you have completed this work. We are going to add a function which allows you to add a photo, video or just notes to describe what work you have completed. We aim towards schools that are already technologically advanced and use ipads and desktop with children in schools. Having finalised this idea we set off to look for bussiness that may offer this service but we couldn't find one. So we had came up with a unique idea.

We assigned ourselves roles which were
Myself: Front end developer
Steven Everest; Finance manager
Robert Harden: Back end developer
Brad Arnott: Director
Khalid khan: Assistant Director


Having researched the roles needed to create this business we felt these were the roles that we would need to complete the project.

Guest speakers- Addison group & Eurocontrol

Today's guest speakers were Farina Broadley and Monica Balducci from (Addison Group). Addison group are a web development group and design websites for all platforms and mobile devices for companies. This was a particularity interesting lecture as this is the field I am aiming to go into for my placement year. They presented there company showing all of their awarding winning work which was truly inspiring they also showed some of the huge companies such as FIFA and Tesco which were there clients. There also was a Kent student with them he had done a placement year with them and was great as they showed the work they had given him and had really pushed him to his full potential. This speech inspired me more to follow up my ambition for webdesign.

The second guest speakers were two Kent students Ayshling Mulhern and James Thompsonat who had done there placement year at  Eurocontrol last year. The placement was in Luxembourg and they showed us some of the amazing events they had done whilst living there. They showed us some of the projects they worked on which was a flash animation they had updated for a flight control video. Aswell as a video they had to produce for the company to be in shown in conferences in a few places around the world. It showed a broad use of camera operating and digital skills. I feel that the placement would be a inspiring learning curve. I will apply for the Eurocontrol placement  as they spke very enthusiastically about how helpful this experience was and how much fun they had working.

Seminar Feedback

Having just completed the seminar it honest I felt that we should have put more effort into our research and material that we used as it seemed that other groups had put allot more time and resources then us. Some of the other groups had even gone as far as contacting the companies of the material they were using .

I also feel that our presentation skills were not as great as people in the group had to use there sheets allot to remember so I feel in the future we should learn the pitch better so we don't need to use the sheets.