New Beginnings

At last, after all this time, after all the trials and tribulations, I HAVE A MAC!





This bad boy is going to help me work through my Final Major Project and generally elevate me to new heights in the future.

I'm not blogging this to rub it in anybody's face; I've had to put up with a rubbish PC for ever. If I open a folder containing 20 photos, my PC crashes and then moans that it has no virtual memory left. It's painstaking.

But Maccy is with me now, and I won't be slowed down or held back any longer,

Weeeeeeeee!

xLouisax

[EDIT] I've had my mac for a few days now and things are going really great ^_^ It's so fast and powerful. They say that technology can't make you happy but I actually wake up every morning and I see it, and smile - it's like waking up to someone. ;)

No Added Sugar Exhibition

The No Added Sugar Exhibition, which took place on the 14th and 15th December 2010 in humble Epsom, Surrey, was an exhibition entirely funded and organised by 3rd year Graphic Design students of The University of Creative arts, Epsom.



It featured current project work by me and some fellow students on my course, and we even had a shop to sell our postcards, cards and little books.

My wall space featured my project, Epsom Characters of course! I was especially happy with how well my set of postcards printed - such good quality prints and they looked amazing! I made £4.50 selling them!




It was also great fun spending the day there setting everything up, splitting into teams to get certain jobs done. I was on the refreshments team so it was our job to go to Asda and buy all the booze! Then we had to regulate the refreshments while the exhibition was running. Other than that, everybody helped to set up the room and workshop together. During the second day, I joined the Workshop crew who were all making live arts and crafts, so I took the opportunu=ity to catch up on some bookbinding. On the whole it was excellently organised and we all worked very well together!





We were all of us appaled at the complete lack of support from out University's PR and of how dismissive they were about the whole thing. We really could have used their help to promote our exhibition, and they shouldn't have taken all of our posters down around Uni (which we had permission to put up).

Nevertheless, this made us even more determined to pull it off, by ourselves. It must just be embarassing for them to now be hearing about how wonderful it went and how much kudos it ultimately brought our University. For them to not have taken this opportunity to promote us, and show prospective students just how organised and determined our University students can be, must mean that they're idiots.

This is not to say that our tutors didn't help us; they were all very supportive and encouraging throughout the whole process and we were very thankful for this. :)

Weeeee!

xLouisax

My Dissertation - Tomb Raider

I'm really excited about my dissertation*; it sums up my interests and passions in life. If I could go back in time and tell my 10 year old self that I get to write my dissertation on Tomb Raider I'd be like "No way, that's too awesome. I actually don't believe you!"




You'd better believe it sister! I'm writing about Lara Croft, the Grand Theft Auto series, and even a bit about Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Why?

I've studied film before, and media theories don't need a genius to be applied to gaming. It is, afterall a massive part of our culture. In my essay, I discuss the pros and cons of Lara Croft being a role model to young girls.



It turns out that Lara Croft is actually a really good role model! Aside from her comically oversized breasts, she's independent, fit, adventurous and brave. She don't rely on no-one but herself!

I'm comparing Lara to other female game characters and alongside this, discussing feminist theories, female representation and fetishism. Why do we fetishise women? Why do both men and women accept the scantily-clad, big-boobed female character without question? Yes, Isabella Valentine (below), I am talking about you!



Now here's a round of trivia to round off your evening.

Trivia #1
There's another really cool part to this discussion. Freud wrote about Fetishism, and explained that the reason why men fetishise women is because Woman, the castrated form of a man, is a scary thing to get their head around. Due to their anxiety about the castrated woman, the only way they can deal with our existence is by making us become a fetish; a weird sexual thing. Second to this, another way to deal with their anxiety is for them to see us as an object of beauty, to be appreciated. I guess it makes sense. We are in a male world after all, or maybe Freud was just a perve like the rest of 'em. :p

Trivia #2
As soon as Lara's assets were made smaller (which was done in order to appeal more to female gamers) in 2005, shares in the game plummeted and sales did all the same. What does this all mean?

All the best,

Louisa Brooks

*A Dissertation is when you basically write a book, and it is required in order to get a BA hons Degree. My Dissertation word count needs to be 6000 words - the longest essay I have ever had to write!

Epsom Characters Quartet!

I have completed my Epsom Characters series. Please click on the Issuu below to view them.

Creating Bike Man was by far the most challenging. I've spent that last couple of weeks drawing faces, bikes, rough-looking people, punks, you name it!

Open publication - Free publishing

My Epsom characters are to be displayed in the No Added Sugar exhibition which has been funded and organised entirely by students in my year group. It takes place next week in the Ebbisham Centre, Epsom, Surrey.

I hope none of the residents these characters are based on turn up! God that will be awkward.

All the best,

Louisa Brooks