Semester 1 Reflection

My Takeaways

Technology

This semester I vastly improved on my technological skills. I had to do research on how to perform various functions in Illustrator such as pathfinder and patterning. I also got much more familiar with gradients and balance. This was important because I now go into Illustrator with more confidence and I know where most of the tools are as well as their basic functions. I have and continued to struggle with certain things such as lining up points exactly.

Collaboration

I didn't have to use much collaboration this semester. I mainly just focused on independently managing my time and work, which I now realize I need work especially in relation to over ambitious goals.

Communication

I had to get more comfortable with communication this semester. In the past I have refrained from asking help from teachers, it has been a weakness of mine. But this semester I have improved on asking for help when I need it as well as asking others' opinions. This is important for improving my work. I still need to improve on this because I often still find myself thinking things aren't worth asking about.

Project Management

This semester I had the rude awakening that my visions for projects just don't align with my available time to work on them. This is a large source of stress and disappointment for me. I have accepted that I need to be more reasonable. Which is important to my future ability to follow through with a plan.

Leadership

I have only really had to lead myself during this project. But I have helped my friends over the course of the semester. This has come with some struggle because sometimes I see a lot of problems but I have to just choose the key ones that they could improve when they ask for my opinion. On the other hand sometimes I don't know what's off. This is important for me to improve on, because hopefully as I give better advice, I will receive better advice.

My Strengths/ Weaknesses

I think I have a good eye and that my creativity is one of my dominant traits. And I believe that these qualities have only continued to grow over this semester. However, as previously mentioned, I struggle to realize my visions. My time management and over-ambition has hindered my potential. I know that if I simplified my visions and made sure they were more attainable in the first place I would avoid many of the obstacles I've been encountering.

Going forward, I am going to allow myself to dream up big ideas, but I am then going to scale it down where its needed. I am also going to make sure I look back and see things big picture enough so that the beginning of my project is more consistent with the end of it.

If I could change anything about my patterns it would be their lack of consistency. My three sets of vectors for my main patterns have painfully individual styles. Having a solid simple vector, a brush vector, and a complex gradient vector set was a terrible decision. It was one I made along the way semi-thoughtlessly.

In conclusion, I like my patterns individually. I've learned a lot from this project thus far, so hopefully going forward I'm able to finish it strongly.