What I've Learn In Creative Studies

At the beginning of this semester, i was not really so creative. By the end of the studies, i realized i had become much more creative than before. i dare to come out something ridiculous ideas. Every week, the lecturer gives us some unimaginable exercises, make us to think outside the box. Lecturer make us dare to sounds out our crazy, beyond our imagination ideas. Things i learnt from the class is that whatever things that are not related to each other can possible be connected through creativity. i think i gained more experiences than previous semester...
- Tang See Tien

When i attended the first class of the creative studies, i felt boring in the class because i'm totally not understand what is lecturer teaching. But when start to do exercise- do the research and post comment on the blog with group member, i started to understand what is the lesson talking about and get to feel interesting about this subject. Well, now i learnt how to use creative way to develop ideas such as brain storming, juxtaposition, random words and so on. All of these increased my imagination in this semester.
- Ong Yen Xiang

When i first time enter Creative Studies class, i knew it was a theory class and i'm kinda hate this kind of classes.
After I attended few classes , I realized  that the exercise given by lecturer are reasonable and standard. It not only about creativity, for example, lecturer always force us done our exercises in class is because lecturer wanted to force us to out ideas and force our potential. Beside that, one more i learnt in Creative Studies is Dare To Think. Juxtaposition ,Novelty, Innovation and Creativity , Mind Map...Those logical theory made me know more about how to achieve a creativity people. I also learnt how to increased my imaginary in my future life through juxtaposition based on combination of two animals. I believed this is amazing lesson i learnt in this end of semester.Thanks
- Tang Tak Choon

Creative Studies is the only subject different among the others based on theory. Last semester, we got Media Appreciation subject which teaches us how to appreciate media form by doing research on technology media, which consist more in technology entertainment. But this time, Creative Studies entertain us manually in a whole new different way. A very childish yet useful way which make it unique. The reason i feel it childish is because mostly the method is like using kid's thinking way and transfer it into drawing. Know what, actually kid's thinking is the most creative compare to the others, because they come up with crazy drawing that doesn't make sense. And then we use the crazy stuffs to create an idea. No matter what result i got in this subject i doesn't care much, because the important is the process what i learnt throughout this subject.
-Tong Weng Foong

Through the Creative Studies class, I've learn many different effective creative thinking techniques. The class gave me a big boost on my creative side. I learn to view things in more perspective. The class was interesting and full of words that jogs my brain to it's fullest. From that, I concluded that this class will be changing me and my way of looking things. Although sometimes I could not understand, it was a challenge to me. From all the research I've done, I think I learn a lot from this class. I hope students taking this class in the future will understand the value of this class.
-Tan Ben Hur

Assignment 2 - Final Sketch

our final process. A storyboard about a sheep cant fall asleep.

FINAL ASSIGNMENT VIDEO

FINAL SKETCH

first we draw it with pencil. Then we trace it with Ink pen. After that we colour it with colour pencil. Lastly, we took photo with DSLR. We come out with an video.

Assignment 2 - Sketches

Step 4. Sketches

We came up with a few sketches for the final presentation.

Assignment 2 - Research

Step 1. Research
Our next assignment was to find out about Faculty of Creative Multimedia. In these few weeks, we gathered around and made this mind map about FCM and also wrote an essay about FCM.

 sketch

final Mind Map

Faculty of Creative Multimedia, or in short, FCM, is one of the faculties in MMU where students are taught to be a designer or digital artist in many different ways. It is also the one and only faculty in Multimedia University Cyberjaya where creativity is used often by both student ans lecturers to do their works and assignments. That is where it's uniqueness comes into play. Not everyday we could see or find people who uses creativity for anything or even everything, but here in FCM, everyone's creativity are used daily and that is something FCM students and lecturers see and experience everyday. Creative multimedia is the new innovation in which it'll emerge as one of the most influential elements in multimedia communications in business, art and design, education, entertainment and also daily lifestyle. One of the very famous creative multimedia work is the Facebook website. It has become the people's mean of communication, entertainment and daily lifestyle.

FCM is all about creativity and multimedia. Creative multimedia, is actually the combination of two different words, creative and multimedia, which has its own particular meaning. Creative is an act of producing or creating something new, different, innovative and imaginative ideas that has values of your own and materialise the ideas into reality. Creativity requires whole-brain thinking which could be enhanced or improved by using techniques such as mind mapping and metaphorical thinking. On the other hand, multimedia is a combination of text, audio, still image, animation and video. It includes a range of formats from a simple PowerPoint slide show to a complex interactive simulation such as Flash. With the combination of the two words creative and multimedia, the word creative multimedia was created and thus defined as art in the form of digital. In the field of creative multimedia, most of the works are done in digital form.

Another unique aspect of FCM is that it combines academic study with capacious creative digital technology production work. The faculty consist of well-balanced teams of faculty members and industry professionals in the field of arts, architecture, computing, broadcasting, animation, design, and advertising. Together, the variation of knowledge and technology is smoothly facilitated, with digital media equipment for production work and research. Just like one common saying; A picture speaks a thousand words. It's the same principle as mixing different varieties of mediums and it'll have an extraordinary effect that makes multimedia today, appealing. The creative industries make use of multimedia for many different kinds of purposes such as fine arts, entertainment, media commercial, journalism and many more. Interestingly enough, this allows student to learn and experience many different fields of profession's work.

In the future generation, digital technologies will be a part of people's daily lifestyle and creative multimedia comes into play, where people will use developed technologies

to express themselves, communicate, study and interact with the whole world. One of the heavily used multimedia is the entertainment industry especially the special effects in movies, animations and video games. Such advancement requires a unique approach, which will need to considerate the combination of disciplines and guarantees a more meaningful and efficient product innovation and improvement. For this particular reason, the Faculty of Creative Multimedia (FCM) was made, where many varieties techniques in the innovative and creative use of Information Communication Technology (ICT) are explored, studied and researched.

The Faculty of Creative Multimedia (FCM) offers a few different academic studies in the fields of digital art. The main intention of the courses is to make high quality multimedia designers or multimedia programmers. The courses provide students with professional techniques and knowledge in creating and researching different varieties of creative multimedia content for online and offline applications. Students will be given informative knowledge in the authoring process and creative media production. The courses are a fusion of the technology of content development and multimedia programming. In the course, science and art are fused to give the backbone for the multimedia content production. The fusion of multimedia content with the outlook of information and communication technology makes the students not just capable of creating the idea but also improving the technology of interactive features

The Foundation in Creative Multimedia course is to teach students the basics of design and art. Students will be taught the skills of drawing, multimedia applications and media production. Not only skills and techniques are taught but also the skill of teamwork is indirectly built within the group of students when completing assignments. After finishing the foundation course, students will have a solid understanding of the basics of design. Students can choose five different degree courses after the foundation course which are Animation and Visual Effects, Virtual Reality, Media Arts, Interface Design and Advertising Design. Examples of subjects taught in the Foundation of Creative Multimedia are photography, computer graphics, visual research and communication, creative English and drawing.

One of the very famous degree course in FCM is the Animation and Visual Effects degree course. Once a student completes the course, it is expected that the students will understand the whole process of producing an animation work that is unified with high quality design sense and the nature of digital animation. Students will also be opened to different ideas of expanding their contents to be more artistically valued, varied and original. During the whole production process, students will develop their technical skill and creative understanding in storytelling and animation refined to become a three-dimensional (3D) animator. The project focuses the importance of content development through the brainstorming process. Students are encouraged to go for ideas that are new and original to the current school of thoughts.

Another interesting degree course in FCM is the Virtual Reality degree course. Students at the Virtual Reality course are committed to become a VR specialists who are qualified and skilled in creating real-time application with the goal of developing experiential design. In this enhanced and improved multimedia era, students will be exposed to a lot of communication modalities. It is for such reason that the experience to write their own is increasingly important for users and this is where designing experience becomes the main aspect. It is about waking up the emotion and feeling of the user by a given form, space, context, content and senses. The user is not just simply passive but also highly interacting with the surrounding and the experience is enhanced through immersible and non-immersible technology. Students will able to analyse problems and fix current issues by suggesting projects such as virtual heritage, virtual manual, virtual art and entertainment.

The Interface Design degree course strives to teach and train students to attain creative and innovative answers for many different communication and technological products, services and applications. Students are taught in how to create meaningful interfaces and appealing interactive answers to enhance the user's experience, to challenge the envelope of the latest greatest technologies, and to improve the daily lifestyles of the world. This comprehensively developed and well-balanced degree course provides student a wide varieties of skill sets, opportunities, and new understanding into the interface design industry. Some of the many subjects student learn in this course are human interaction ways, graphical user interfaces, audio and video user interfaces, product visualisation, interface simulations and design specifications.

The Media Art degree course offers multidisciplinary means of arriving to media creation that enhances individual research, experimentation and creative technologies practise. The subjects are taught in an exciting and inspiring environment where theories and practises can be investigated and ideas flow. The Media Art degree course focuses mainly on experimental media creation and the results emerge in many various mediums such as interactive systems, websites, installations, performances and sometimes public spaces. Students of Media Art degree course aims to create socially and culturally relevant objects, experiences and spaces.

For the Advertising Design degree course, the basic learning result that we search for in a project is the students' ability to use their knowledge on elements and principles of advertising into effective ideas. The Advertising Design degree course's main objective is to guarantee that the students have high understanding of techniques and skills in creative concept, execution and production of creative multimedia content. Students will be able to fully implement the leading-edge innovations of electronic media, with a stable comprehension of their product, consumer and the marketplace. At the end of the course, students will learn the theory and practise of advertising, creativity and innovation, basic marketing, media, and indirectly, research skills as well as the business logic and practicality.

One of the main differences between FCM and other faculties in MMU is that there are a lot of assignments. Assignments are not given only just to evaluate student's mark or achievement, but the truth behind all the assignments is that the lecturers wants the students to experience the process of completing a particular work so that if in the future there are something similar needed to be done, students will be at ease to complete their works. Not only that the assignment gives experience to students, but the assignments will also become the student's future reference or portfolio.

There are many jobs graduates from the courses of creative multimedia can become. A few examples are multimedia designers, computer artist, 3-D animator, film director, advertising consultant, art director, R&D product designer, interface designers, instructional designers, multimedia trainers, immersive content consultant, simulation designer, virtual environment designer and smart phone application programmer. Each and every profession of this field of multimedia requires great skills to apply and visualise their unique creativity into a medium. For example, a graphic designer, or in another term, graphic artist, have to plan, analyse and visualise many answers to solve the communication problem between the people and the media. Graphic designers searches for the most effective ways to communicate through the different numbers of media by using the elements and principles of design and various creative thinking techniques. By doing so, graphic designers will be able to develop and produce a unique piece of work.

There are many interesting facilities students can use for their projects and assignments in FCM such as the Design Studio and the VR Theater.The Design Studio is a contribute workplace for students to improve their creative thinking skills and make design projects and assignments. The Graphic Lab is equipped with computers that have the potential to render high-resolution computer graphic images. The computers are also installed with professional graphic and image editing software tools such as the Adobe Photoshop, the Adobe Illustrator, the Macromedia Freehand and the Macromedia Fireworks. The Interactive Lab is a place where students can produce quality interactive multimedia applications into digital mediums on the computers that are equipped with high level authoring tools like Macromedia Director, Macromedia Dreamweaver and Macromedia Flash. The Set and Background Studio is a physical studio where there are blue or green screen and motion capture facilities for a virtual studio set-up. The E-Gallery is an exhibition centre where the conceptualised becomes a door to the multimedia and digital world. It also displays the best of student's work.

There are three 3D Labs in FCM. The first lab is the Modelling Labs where students can create complex 3D objects using high-end computers and tools such as 3D Studio Max, AutoCAD, Maya and Softimage. Another lab is called the Animation Labs which contains specialised facilities comprising of hardware and software intended for high-end 3D animation purposes. And finally the last lab is the Rapid Prototyping Lab which consist of Computer Aided Design (CAD) facilities to create prototype designs and replicas for interface design concepts. There are two Post Production Labs in FCM. One of them is the Video Labs that is for high-end non-linear video editing. Another lab is called the Audio Lab which is used for creating and editing digital sound and it is equipped with Workstations with leading-edge audio software tools. Finally, the last facility which is the VR Theatre. It is a mini theatre used for stereoscopic image projection with high quality surround sound.

In conclusion, the Faculty of Creative Multimedia is a great place for people who wishes to be in the field of design. Also, students of FCM will become the leading generations of the multimedia era in the future where multimedia is heavily used everywhere.

References :

1. http://creative.mmu.edu.my/2011/
2. http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos090.htm
3. http://www.mmu.edu.my/
4. http://digital9zii.com/node/9 

Step 2. Idea Generation & Development
Based on the research on Faculty of Creative Multimedia, next we have chosen mind map to present our focus point which is Creative Thinking Technique.

mind map of Creative Thinking Technique

Step 3. Creative Solutions

Based on our focus mind map that about Creative Thinking Technique.
We have devolop the topic into      (READ MORE)