Week 0

This was the first week I was at the university and it was very nerve wrecking because I really felt home sick and isolated almost instantly when i arrived so It was something to get used to. I have never been to such a big city and a university like that so it was definitely scary when it came to it because I am a very shy person when it comes to things like new places. So I am not going to lie I hated everything and thought to myself what am I doing when I arrived at the University. This was officially the freshers week which meant we didn’t really do anything too serious. I liked that because I was scared and trying to adjust to the place was definitely something else. We came into the university and we got our student Ids and then two really nice girls introduced used to the University and everything inside of it pretty much.

When we were getting introduced to all the lecturers it was scary and exciting at the same time because everyone wants to have really good teachers no doubt. When I met our lecturers I was really happy because they all seemed very nice and friendly. So I thought to myself that I definitely like the teachers and this could be an amazing course that I have joined.

We then all got split into different groups from all the years and we were given a choice. To either create an animation or create a banner for the University freshers. I immediately was scared because I am still improving and want to keep improving my art and art style so I was scared nobody would even like my designs. I was in the group with one more boy from second year and then two girls from higher years then me…It was definitely scary and at that moment all I could think about was just going home. I really felt helpless.

We all then introduced our selves and talked about think that maybe we would want to do and we decided to go with the banners.

These are some of the images that I was looking at for references and how we might make the banner look. When we came in the next day we all started sketching some ideas out that could work for the banner.

Some of banner references

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These are just some of thee references that I have looked when deciding what design to go for which was a pretty fun experience not going to lie. We wanted to come up with a cool design, but still keep the Ulster University feel and professionalism. I have then used the whole class that we were in there in order to sketch some of the banner ideas so maybe my team mates might want to use some of them to create something better. This is because I have noticed that all of my group members had good laptops and drawing tablets…and I only had a sketchbook which was really discouraging, but I still designed some of the banner ideas by looking at the references.

My Designs

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These were two of the designs and styles that I have worked on and when I showed them to my group members they side they really like the way I put everything and how i placed everything properly. They then took some of the ideas down and used it for their digital drawing on the tablet. The 2nd year finished the design and it was pretty simple with a pink back ground, but it did represent the Ulster University freshers so I liked the idea. The last day we then had t go up in front of the class in front of everyone and present our final idea which was so scary because I barely knew anyone of them and they all just starred..Unfortunately I wasn’t able to grab a copy of the final banner, but I know that I have inspired the whole design and the structure of the banner which I am happy about.

This first week was definitely a roller coaster of emotions for me at least because I have never been alone in such a big city so everywhere I would go I would miss home.