Make look pretty – By @orla2marie
By Orla O’Connor
Make look pretty
It’s d&ad week and craft is God. We have spent so long focusing on ideas. Learning that any idea we have is not original that likely someone will have something very similar at new blood, or at least elements of your campaign in theirs. Sometimes the only thing that separates you is your craft, a well polished script and a well polished visual. Your love and polish of the idea. Only problem that mine and my partners biggest weakness is producing fast. We love making things but almost savour the process too much. It’s an issue that we are constantly trying and speed up, and with the tight d&ad deadline this shall be our biggest test.
We had an amazing class last week by Alexandra Taylor which gave us all a huge amount to think about. It was hard not to get inspired by craft when she was standing there sharing reams of wisdom. I can only hope that one day I become a fraction as successful as Alexandra. But I started trying to art direct more while focusing on d&ad. Not settling on a typical format. Looking to find a readable but weird layout that lends itself to the idea but doesn’t distract. I realised this art direction malarkey is bloody hard. And that for our new blood to be crafted to perfection we are going to have to say goodbye to our lives for a little while.
That’s one thing that new students always ask at selection day. Do we have time. And I think that yes we do. If you want to be average, if you want to have time you can you can take short cuts, coast and produce good work. But you don’t really come to SCA and subject yourself to the weirdly pleasurable torture of the school unless you want to be great. So you shouldn’t want free time you should want to be obsessed with learning to make great work not good work. And I am no where near great but I’m a massive leap forward from the sub-good work that I was producing before school. Looking back back at it, its work that I’m not sure if I would have let me into school and I have no idea why I am here, but I don’t want to know. I just want to be thankful for the opportunity I’ve been given and prove to those that saw something in me that they made the right decision taking a bet on me. And new blood is just one of the many ways to do that. So here’s to crafting your arse off and many hours of making look pretty.
