Crit Week Supervision

At this weeks crit the students showed a lot of progress, which I tried to get across to them as much as possible because I know how often people giving feedback forget to do that and only critique things that need improvement.

I did notice however that my appeal to them last pitch of keeping a blog did not catch on. Only one person actually had a blog, but this was only filled with development for one module. One other person mentioned she was going to post everything on the blog after she had finished all her sketches and concepts. This is again not the way to go, I think. Personally, I think a blog is a great thing and very important to keep your thoughts in one place but as I tried to make that clear to the students last pitch I didn't make a point of saying it again.

Especially as this time there was something else lacking and that was preparation. A lot of the students had done great work and had lots to show (in their sketchbooks) but some had either forgotten to make a note of their ideas, or had more in another sketchbook they had forgotten and so on. I felt the need to remind them that this was the time to ask for feedback, to learn from other students and fourth years and gain invaluable perspective they would otherwise not be able to receive. Yes it's annoying if the person who's holding a presentation isn't well prepared but in this case they should be more fussed about getting feedback than us getting a nice presentation. It's a shame they're not aware of that enough, so I tried and make them understand that pitch and crit is mainly for them to learn and less about us saying "well done, good presentation".

It also seemed that a few of the students spent quite some time researching and making concepts, instead of diving into the development stage. Me and Dmitrijs made sure that they are aware of the time frame and that they should start developing their ideas instead of doing more research.

All in all, I think I gave good feedback, made the students aware of what's important and what to look out for. I also mentioned that you don't have to start a new project for every module and every year but (depending on the lecturer and the module) you can use concept work from one semester to develop the project further in the next or use a 3D model for another project. That's what I did for a few of my projects over the years and it worked out really well. That way you don't end up with a lot of scattered ideas but a few solid portfolio pieces, that were developed over more than just one semester