Personal Planning, Reflection and Development. CV and Statement.

Mathew Brewer

19 Green Road

Winton

Bournemouth BH9 1DU

Tel: +44 (0) 7525 053 130

E-mail: mathewpaulbrewer@hotmail.co.uk

Date of birth: 04/12/1985

Nationality: British

Education:

2008- FdA Interactive Media, the Arts Institute at Bournemouth

Present Graduate 2009

2004- National Diploma Fine Art (Fine Art), the Arts Institute at Bournemouth

2006 Grade: Merit Distinction Merit

Work Experience

2008 Text + Work Gallery, Promotional DVD production for the

Exhibition. A Short Grand Tour by Jim Hunter + Professor Simon Olding

2006 St Nicholas CE VA Primary School, Station Road, Child Okeford, Dorset County Council. Arts Assistant (general one day per class).

Personal Activities:

Graphic Design, Cartoon Character Design, Illustration, Web Design

Graphic Novels, Gallery Visits, Going to the Cinema, Play Guitar

Personal Statement:

I am studying FdA Interactive Media at the Arts Institute Bournemouth, Graduating 2009. I have recently undertaken a work placement for the Text + Work Gallery. Future Plans include further work placements within the Interactive/Digital media arena.

My practice is concerned with political and current events, whilst also taking a satirical look at the world around us today. Mathew finds inspiration in a variety of different genres.

I am open to collaborative work or individual assignments. With a passion for Digital Media, Graphic Design and Fine Art, and Story Boards.

Personal Planning, Reflection and Development. Written Evaluation

Personal Planning, Reflection & Development 1

I chose FdA Interactive Media as a result of my great enjoyment of screen based audio visual work and also because some of the work I had seen on display that had been produced as a result of the course.

Induction Week:

During this first week of the term, we went to the beach at Sandbanks and were split into small groups as part of a team building exercise. We had to build something using found materials on the beach as part of a brief to produce something which represented Global Warming. We were provided a spade and an orange bucket and a camera as our only building materials. My group decided to build an arm chair in the sand to represent the lazy attitude most people have towards Global Warming and then to wear the provided buckets on our heads to represent the Ignorance most people tend to display to the issue as well.

Also in this induction week, we went to the Tate Modern. I thought that this was a really interesting, and a great way for us all to get to know each other.

Introduction to Web Design:

I personally really enjoyed this unit a lot, as I’d never really had that much involvement with website building or design before, so everything I did was a new learning experience for me which I found to be very interesting. The brief for this unit was to produce a website which showed an artist or artistic movement which greatly inspired us as artists/designers. For the majority of my life my greatest inspiration has always come from cartoons and cartoonists. So I chose to form my website like a comic book telling the story of all the cartoonists that have inspired me from childhood until today. I felt that this was a successful unit for me as it allowed me to explore things that I love, produce my own character designs and to apply this to a new format to me at the time, which was web design.

Image Production Techniques:

This was our second unit, as part of the brief we had to draw upon the photography which we took during the Induction week as part of the day trip to Sandbanks. For this unit we had to produce a digital image montage using Photoshop, which we could then further manipulate in After Effects. As well as this we were given a brief introduction to the Maya 3D animation software, I had used this briefly before to animated pre rendered models, but this further introduction was quite useful to me as I had never used this software to create three dimensional models before. However for Aesthetic and theoretical reasons I decided against using imagery from Maya as part of my final outcome for this project. This unit had two themes which we could work to, one being ‘A political response considering Global Warming and the effects upon the environment’. Or to ‘consider how different cultures conceptualise there relationship to the environment’. I chose the Global warming/Political theme to respond to. For this I came up with the theme of ‘Ignorance is Bliss’ for which I spent a lot of time and effort in creating the best possible way which I could demonstrate the point that most people are happy to ignore a situation as long as it its not really directly effecting them to heavily at a given particular time. My main artistic Influence for this project was a series of Graphic Novels called ‘Tank Girl’ by Jamie Hewlett and Alan Martin. I felt that I used a similar ethos to the Tank Girl comics within my work for the final piece of this unit, whilst also adapting it with my style and to also fit the brief.

Digital Sound and Video production:

The Idea behind this brief was to produce a short video which could be uploaded to youtube with intent of it becoming a viral video. For this unit we had to work as part of a small group, which in my case consisted of Myself, James Crawford, Rhett Edwards and Steven Donea. I don’t feel that this unit went as well as it could have, and I could blame it on a whole plethora of things. But for now we’ll leave it at my poor health during the unit and also a lack of ideas which we were all collectively happy with as a group. Which in the end lead to us producing the video ‘Any Ideas?’ which is basically a audio visual representation of our lack of and Idea for this unit, whilst at the same time using themes such as repetition which seemed popular in the viral video arena at the time. To successfully complete this unit we had to display confident use of Camera work, after having tutorials on how to use the video camera which was available to us, I felt slightly let down in terms of this, as Steven who was chosen as our camera man opted for more experimental hand held techniques as apposed to the tripod shots we had previously discussed as a group. All that said this unit was definitely a learning experience for me in terms of group organisation and how the filming process works, even with a script and story boards things can and still will go undeniably wrong. However as a result of this I feel that if I was in a situation where by I had to undertake a similar project in the future I would be capable of making it work to a much better standard and to produce something of a much higher quality.

Interaction Design Principles:

I am yet to complete this unit as a result of a health condition which has left me unable to complete much work. However the tutorials received on how to use the Director Animation and programming software were really very good. Without which I simply wouldn’t have much of an understanding at all about how programming language works, specifically in this case Lingo. I do however have an idea for this unit and really like the idea of producing an Interactive story telling piece. For this I aim to produce a game which for the time being is most likely to be a platform game, which has a narrative based upon an issue of political Interest, like child hood obesity or global warming, although we were encouraged to base the narrative on a piece of writing or a song which inspires us. I will probably use the lyrics to a rock song or something as my basis for this unit, at the moment a song by The Gallows called In the Belly of a Shark, which has a lot of imagery which I feel would be amazing in the form of a platform action game.

Theories of Interactive Media:

For this Unit we were given a series of lectures and tutorials by Bob Cotton on the history of Interactive Media. These lectures have been greatly informative and although on some occasions I was already aware of some of the information, on others I was learning quite a lot, or making connections to other things which I was already interested in. For the essay which we had to write I chose the subject of “The evolution of marketing in the music industry” as I am greatly interested in music and how it is and will be promoted in the future of the ever expanding industry. I feel that this is a very interesting topic to cover as, with decline of record sales the music industry are having to come up with new and exciting ways of presenting the music they are selling. I am yet to complete this unit as a result of my health issue, but feel that the tutor support already received as part of this unit has equipped me with enough knowledge and understanding to complete a successful and hopefully interesting Illustrated essay.

Conclusion:

As this Academic year draws to a close I feel that I have definitely made the right choice in joining the Interactive media course, as all of the units and tutorial support have inspired me to produce some of my favourite and what I consider to be my best work to date. Even though I have had issues with my health that have hindered my works progress the course staff have been really supportive in helping me realise the outcomes I desired from each Unit. I am really looking forward to the next academic year, and also to my work placement which is to be undertaken at the Text + Work gallery at the Arts Institute Bournemouth, where I will be able to put my learned knowledge from this past year to good use, as I have been asked to produce a promotional DVD for an upcoming exhibition with the possibility of making the DVD content able to stream or download from the Text + Work website.