In the beginning of Tuesday's class, there was a student from Gauge to talk to us about AIGA. To be honest, I wish he had gone more in dept into what benefits AIGA provides. He did go into the basics of it's benefits such as things like StimuLatte and events where you can communicate with other designers from other schools to see what they're doing. It was later though that Jimmy Moss told us that most of the things he listed were free. But after being told about it, I did take the time to visit the AIGA website and my goodness! Did you know they even give you discounts for health insurance!? Just seeing that was enough to convince me to pay 50 bucks--discounted from 95 bucks!-- to join AIGA. Not to mention that you can find AIGA design jobs or internships as well as a whole bunch of other benefits! I feel like I'm accidentally advertising AIGA but hey, why not? It seems like a great thing to be a member of. I'm not even a design student and I feel convinced to join!
By the second half of the class time we had left, we had presentations for our game concept ideas. Our previous assignment had been to refine one of the nine concept ideas. We were to make it better and presentable. So we did. We were then to critique our peer's presentation itself and not the concept. I had found this very beneficial to us because there aren't too many classes that requires us to present in a professional manner. Though I've had done many presentations in front of a class in many of my previous class but they had all been informal and simple. For these other classes, it didn't seem to matter if we were constantly fidgeting or saying "um" a bunch of times, or just simply reading off a sheet of paper. But for this presentation, everything mattered. Our speech's pace mattered, our volume of our voice mattered, eye contact mattered, our stance mattered, our body language mattered. Even the way we designed our presentation mattered.
There was only time for about five or six people to present. There were several things that I took note of when people were being critiqued on their presentations like body language. I remembered one student who seemed fairly confident in her presentation. Her voice was firm but she gestured a lot. I think she was the first to present. And at first, it was difficult for the class itself to critique our own peers. There was a lot of complementing and more questions on the game itself rather than the presentation. Then Jimmy proceeded to tell us about constructive criticism. He had mentioned how people at CSULA are quite kind to each other especially to our peers and I don't disagree. But he also said that constructive criticism is something we all needed to learn in other to better ourselves for the future and to learn. Because really, we're all learning from each other. After that, critiquing seemed to come a little bit much easier amongst the students.
There were a couple of observations that I hadn't even noticed until other students pointed out. For instance, there was another student who's idea was brilliant. I even thought her speech was good. But a few people pointed out her body language. She had her arms crossed unless she was pointing out something. She also had her legs crossed as she stood. Jimmy mentioned that the stance was telling the audience that you're not open to suggestions when you do this. Or that you're trying to protect yourself. I had noticed I had done this accidentally later on Thursday. But more on that later.
There was one more observation that I found helpful. She was the last to present for the day but she was quite nervous. She spoke really fast. By the end of her presentation, Jimmy spoke to her in a very smoothing gentle voice, asking her to take a moment to breathe. Now, if you've never met Jimmy Moss, Jimmy has a very loud voice. It can be scary at times but really, he's just excited. So for him to speak in a gentle soothing voice, it was very calming. But his simple request from her to ask her to breathe I think was enough to make even some of the audience relax a little. Sometimes when the presenter is tense, the aura sometimes seeps out and becomes contagious almost. It happens vice versa too. It happened after the first presenter had finished. A lot of us had become tensed up from the critique that the vibe also affected the next presenter. So by the last presenter, Jimmy told us that sometimes he liked to relax his shoulders before speaking and to just take a deep breath. I had found this really helpful because later on Thursday, I had done the same and found it quite relaxing. It didn't take away all the uneasiness that I had but it was enough to get me through just fine.
Adjectives:
burbly - uttered with unrestrained enthusiasm
etheral - delicate; heavenly
sedulous - working hard
No comments:
Post a Comment