IDEATING LIKE AN Artists

Introduction

So, what is a DA?

After watching the lecture and investigating definitions in week one, my understanding of a DA is as the following: A digital artefact is an artefact that is of a digital nature or creation, while vastly covering multiple content types (text, audio, video, image, animation, or a combination). For example, a meme is such an artefact.

Starting in week 1 and into week 2, I begun to work on conceptualizing and rapidly prototyping ideas for the media project (DA) as I would be working on it for the remainder of the subject. I began by outlining my personal interests and passions. While keeping in mind that the idea needed to be free-form, while being curated online and in public with a clear social utility.

This led to two key DA ideas.

The first, a ‘Student Survival Guide to Wollongong’ or in other words a ‘Student Survival Manual’ (with a ‘Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy’ theme). The concept came from my own struggles as a first-year student and first timer living away from home. Also, I soon realised that all the helpful information, such as ‘Shuttle bus information’ to ‘UOW security numbers’ were all on different pages and the idea of the student guide was to place all of the needed information in one search engine. The idea was to have a social platform, such as Instagram, to post tips and tricks to surviving your first year at the ‘Gong’. Some of the ‘tips’ would be need to know essentials, like ‘Where to purchase cheap food’ or ‘How to use the shuttle bus.’ Whereas, other ‘tips’ would be more humorous, like ‘What to do at 2am in the morning if your bored….Kmart has the answers’. The DA would be interactive and get other students’ options and ‘Survival’ guidance.

However, after looking online there were similar sites that where already doing this, such as ‘The UOW Experience’ and tourists’ guides.

Hence, my iteration of the second DA idea- ‘Amelia’s Daily Drawing’. I have always been passionate about all things creative (drawing, photography, design and photo manipulation) and at the time I believed this would benefit my DA.

I realized that I needed to focus on my passions as it would make the DA less like an assessment and more like an extension to what I have already been creating in my daily life. This carried onto the ‘Thinking Stage’.

Thinking

In this stage, I thought about what problems I wished to explore and the potential opportunities that are recognisable through my interests and skills in art. As stated previously in my last post- my DA pitch– the ‘problem’ was my own motivation and artistic practice. I had decreased my drawing and creating rate in the last 18 months and wanted to improve on this. Thus, I have set myself a daily drawing challenged witch has been incorporated into my DA. As for the potential opportunities, this will challenge me to draw every day and inspire others to kick start their art. While, building a digital documentation over a consistent span of time of my art, which can be used in the future as a portfolio.

Observing

By week 3, I had decided on my utilities (Deviant Art, Pinterest, Instagram and YouTube). These platforms, I consider to be the most useful for targeting my audience, as sites-like Deviantart- contain niche audiences that I will be able to cater for. I then begun to investigate my competition and observe their style, format and # usage.

I discovered that audience liked consistent posts and a clear online persona (the face behind the art making). Many artists profiles on Instagram lack personal exposure in their online presence. However, the accounts that balance between posts about art and that of the artists life have a higher following rate. Because of this I wish to promote both my art and a persona of myself to create a sense of identity on my accounts that audiences will be able to follow.

Kickstarting My Art

“Drawing is not what one sees but what one can make others see”
Edgar Degas (1834 – 1917) French artist

Since my last update, I’ve activated a Deviant Art, Pinterest, Instagram and YouTube account to kickstart my art and online presence. On the 20^th of August, I begun using Instagram and since then have been posting daily. Each post is of one drawing that I have created on the day, I have chosen to do this as its #FIST (fast, inexpensive, simple, tiny). The audience reaction has been encouraging, and they have been intrigued by my daily art challenge as other accounts may only post weekly.

I have noticed that my Instagram audience like to be involved through comments, therefore I have porotype a ‘what should I draw’ section for viewers to requeues and interact with. I started posting early as I wanted to fail early and fail often to learn from my mistakes before posting across all platforms. And fail early I did!

Analytics

Defining

My first failure was deciding on an online identity and logo.

After a few iterations, I came up with this one as it represents my DA and persona.

Another issue I had was filming, I had never made a drawing time-lapse before and kept getting the angle of the camera wrong. I took to twitter to ask for some constructive advice, this was helpful, and I later achieved the filming of the drawing.

Ideating

what’s to come in the future?

Here are potential ideas for my DA as I move forward into the semester.

Thanks for the read!

Kind Regards,

Millie

Instagram: @amelia_artdaily
Twitter: @milliecaptions