Another week that was looked forward to with anticipation.  For two days Dave H.  took us on a whirlwind tour of Photoshop.  Then after a morning of inspiration of what can be done he launched us into our assignments and the hands on learning process.  We were challenged to create a collage, special effects project and artwork using what we had learned.  Once again all were pleasantly surprised at how much could be done and what was achieved over two days.

This was a much anticipated week by all the students on the SFM, especially with those who were more often than not seen with their cameras glued to their faces.  Bob B a resident of Chiang Mai came to get us familiar with photography, our cameras and what makes good photographs.  Mid week we were also joined for a morning by Jio who taught us on studio lighting and showed us some creative techniques and uses of light.

At the end of the week we enjoyed an outing to a farm outside of Chiang Mai with the opportunity to do more hands on photography.  We were all pleasantly surprised and impressed with the results of what we had learned in such a short time.

Since I haven’t blogged in awhile I will give a quick sum-up of the weeks we had so far:

Week 3

So the last day of Carol’s Teaching was great we started off with the assignment we were told to prepare the day before. We were given each, in three separate groups, a people group and told to present ways we could reach them through appropriate medias. The teams played roles of Missionaries and Locals acting out situations that may occur when visiting that people group.

It was fun to see all the different groups act out their situations.
We separated from the SFM to be taught on Figure Drawing and Anime by Karen S. She taught for 2 weeks first starting with drawing realistic figures by sketching a model in different poses. It was great to see the students work on paper and seeing the different types of styles we all had.

Week 4

On the second week we were taught on drawing anime and the differences between them and other cartoons. One noticeably different thing is the many types of eyes in Anime being one of the most unrealistic element in Anime drawing.

On the same week we also went to the zoo for a day and sketched some animals to get a little used to none human figures.

Week 5

This week was a combined week with the SFM which Steve B. taught on Story & Script Writing but, unfortunately, I had to miss out on it because we, the staff, had to go to the staff conference down in Cha-am.

For more on this week see Angela’s SFM blog entry.

Week 6

For this week we joined with some new people for, what we like to call, a seminar week. Our SoCAM class of 3 students became 8 students as we had some people sign up for the seminar. Dave H. taught on Comic Development and the students all worked very hard to develop a minimum of 4 page comic intended to reach someone they already know or at least a rendition of a character they know.

It seemed like a pretty good week with the extra seminar students giving some very positive feed-back.

Week 7

This week we are learning Photoshop with Dave H. joining once again with our SFM buddies. This is a week I really enjoy as I get to help out the students on their queries on how to develop great images of photo collages, digital paintings and surreal special effects. Every once in awhile someone in the classroom would say, “I love photoshop” and after a couple days it was more than just me.

We were privileged along with the SoCAM to have Steve B. this week.  He took us through the steps of creating a story, what a script consists of, dramatic structure and the differences between Asian and Western story telling.  We enjoyed watching many of his short films, along with some others to analyse them and learn from their success and mistakes.

At the end of the week, we were challenged to write a “treatment” for our own script that we shared with the class.  Thanks to Steve for looking after us!