Scott Hopkins Fall 2000

This section of Block has two educational goals which are integral to your photographic major. The first is to continue developing your artistic practice, and the second is to expand your digital skills. These two agendas will only merge in the last assignment of this class.

In previous photography classes you have been assigned projects to teach you different aspects of photography skills and theory. In this class you have one semester long project.

Sometimes artists have too many ideas and can’t commit to one, sometimes artists lack confidence or conviction, sometimes artists feel stuck and don’t know how to continue and want to give up: and these are all ways for artists to not achieve all that they are capable of doing. There is rarely a perfect idea, but there are a lot of good ideas. And the old adage about 10 percent inspiration, 90 % perspiration is true. The point of this semester long project is both the work produced and to get you to engage, if you are not already, in this style of focused artistic process. This style of work requires a level of artistic maturity and a confidence in your ideas. You will commit to one theme, for better or worse, and follow it to a certain point, in this case to the end of the semester.

In the beginning of the semester, through class discussion, you will arrive at a topic that you will work on throughout the semester. This project will account for fifty percent of your grade. We will look at your project in a group critique, "in-process" at midterm, and a final critic at the end of the semester. You can bring in some work for critique at any class period throughout the semester as well.

Besides developing professional artistic skills, this project will give you a body of work based on your own aesthetic ideas which you could use to apply for shows.

Flash is the second component of this class and Flash is cool. Flash is a buzz word in multimedia, its the hot program that everyone wants to learn. It can make projects for the web, CD-ROM, animations. Besides being cool, Flash will be a good introduction to multimedia concepts which you can apply when using Director and you will be able to use Flash projects in Computer Imaging II.

You will be learning Flash by completing a series of tutorials from the book, Flash Web Design, by Hillman Curtis. The very last Flash assignment will be to take the theme of your photography project and make a related Flash project. Every week you will turn in one tutorial. These tutorials will be graded pass fail and there will be no partial credit for half completed work.

Meeting once a week means that while you are losing classroom time, you are gaining "hands-on" time. The subjects of this course are both "hands-on", and as part of this class you are expected to do a large amount of work outside of class. Class time will be used to ask questions, solve problems, and discuss theoretical texts relative to your work.

Coming to class is extremely important since we are meeting only once a week. I will drop anyone who misses three classes. Your class attendence and participation, together with the Flash Tutorials will make up 30 % of your grade, and you will be given a grade every week. Your final Flash project will be worth 20 %, and as mentioned your photo project will account for 50 %.

My office hours are Thursday 12:30 -2:30 and Thursday 5:30 to 6:30.

My campus phone number is 713-743-2855

My e-mail is shopkins@mail.uh.edu