Student Info Blog News
The 2010 Armageddon Expo was touted as having a brand new mix of animation, comics, gaming, TV and movie stars, movie screenings, rides, lasertag, wrestling, music, contests, giveaways and more.
This year Natcoll had a live video greenscreen, where attendees at the expo could pretend to be a TV journalist doing a live cross. Read the rest of this entry »
Digital Media Advanced student exhibition at Auckland campus
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About 100 people attended the opening of the Digital Media Advanced student exhibition at Te Karanga Gallery last December.
Faithful to the theme ‘Vintage’, the work was hung inside a range of frames of different colours, sizes and styles, or design mock-ups were placed on top of artfully arranged pieces of antique furniture. Read the rest of this entry »
Ant Timpson (organiser of the 48hours film competition among other NZ film events) is an enthusiastic supporter of arthouse/independent. He believes that there are “some cool films (that) deserve to be seen in cinemas with an audience of fans”. His enthusiasm extended to the REC and REC2 films. He knew the distributor – Vendetta Films – had a very limited marketing budget so proposed the REC2 competition. Read the rest of this entry »
Digital Media (Advanced) tutor Klaus Kramer, has won a Bronze BeST Design Award from the Designers Institute of New Zealand (DINZ) for his graphic design work on a pair of skis.
It was an unusual commission and an unlikely canvas, but Klaus rose to the challenge when ski manufacturer Kingswood asked him to come up with a design for their limited edition designer topsheets. He says he enjoyed the restrictions of working on a 200cm x 10cm canvas and his passion for typography became the foundation for the work. ‘I’m really into geometric shapes and patterns especially if they contain impossible figures or optical illusions … I always wondered why type always needed to be horizontal,’ he says. Klaus patiently and painstakingly designed a unique font for the project that can be written in three different directions.
You can see the finished product on the Kingswood Skis website or maybe even whizzing down the slopes at a ski field next year.
Many Natcoll students from across all three campuses entered C4’s competition to produce an indent reflecting C4’s change in direction – ‘Last year C4 moved away from being purely music television and is [now] focused on being a general entertainment channel with a defined youth focus.’
Students worked closely together to get a consistent branding theme, and largely keep it simple and in line with the current look – that is, a limited colour palette with vector based drawings. The overall winner was from Natcoll’s Auckland campus, Video Post Production student William Littlejohn. To view his winning entry, as well as 17 other student’s entries which were also considered good enough to go to air, watch C4 over the next few weeks or visit C4’s website.
The 
Armageddon Expo is the biggest fantasy event in New Zealand and its new location at Auckland’s ASB Showground gave Natcoll the space to really demonstrate the talent of its students and tutors.
Natcoll’s green screen proved a hit with visitors. The green screen set up allowed many visitors to the Natcoll stand to be transported to exotic locations in an instant; and seminars, demonstrations, show reels and games offered interest and variety throughout the weekend. It was a great success.
Diploma of Animation and Digital Video students have created some amazing composite images as they explore the many ways Photoshop and Illustrator can be used in design. With expert guidance from tutor Kevin Phillips they’ve learned how to apply the software in a range of production-related projects, from 3D textures to Digital Matte Painting.
They’ve also unleashed their inner superhero (or villain) and created their own superhero logos, names and characters. This exercise required them to not only put into practise the tools of Illustrator, but also to think about colour, type and design.
Recent graduate Munaf Bhaniya Patel proves that hard work and focus pays off as he starts his graphic design career with digital printing company Omnigraphics. Munaf studied fine arts in India, then did a certificate in graphics and worked for a printer in Mumbai. He moved first to England, where he worked as a pc operator on CorelDRAW, then arrived in New Zealand in 2008.
Kevin Phillips’s (Natcoll tutor) passion for LightWave 3D is such that he initiated and has run the New Zealand LightWave Users Group for over 12 years.
He recently created a website (www.kiwavers.org) to provide users across the country with an online space on which to share and discuss their work. The user group comprises (among others) quite a few former Natcoll students and they’ve posted some great work up onto the gallery ;section of the website.
Auckland Campus shows its support for the local 3D community by providing a space for meetings each month.
Workchoice Day allows students to explore the ‘what do you want to be when you grow up’ question in a real world setting.
Natcoll recently hosted about 40 students from four different colleges and gave them an inside look at the work of an animator, graphic designer and motion graphics artist/video editor. It was enjoyable and educational. All the students got some hands-on experience and discovered more about the study pathways and career options available in creative digital design.
