...is a mixed but interesting experience.
For those who don't know, I'm working for five day week (starting last Monday, 23rd June) at GBM, who, as I've said to people in order to avoid confusion, are a graphics design company. In actual fact, GBM does work on the designs of others...okay, this is hard to explain. Basically, GBM are given design work off other companies, usually in Adobe Illustrator or Acrobat format and then GBM make fine changes to the designs and set them up for numerous printing, cutting and finishing techniques as specified by the client.
My first day started with a short tour of the buildings before I was handed over to some member of the computer team. They came up with the idea of me creating a poster for something. Already ideas were forming in my head. The second I was asked, "so what do you like?" the words "Video games" were coming out of my mouth before I could react. As a result, I was soon at work on a Mac making a, yes you guessed it, Metal Gear Solid 4 release poster. It used the background and message of this wallpaper. The two characters on the poster were taken from in-game screenshots from the game. The logo in the top right corner was made entirely from scratch on Adobe Illustrator. Likewise, the title in the bottom right corner was made on Illustrator with a downloaded font. Sadly, because the logo and writings were made using vectographics (they can be scaled to any size without any distortion what-so-ever) the low-res screenshots and background look quite tacky in comparison. Beggars can't be choosers though, and these were the best screens I could find on the 'ol tinter-web.
The next day I printed off this poster on multiple mediums using a huge ink-jet printer and with a large Lambda printer (in the Lambda Complex, OMG Half-Life!) which uses a modern version of emulsion printing. For this I had to work in a dark room...which suprisingly wasn't the dark red room I've seen on TV, in fact it was completely pitch-black and I had to work blind!
Today wasn't that much fun in comparison to the days before. I was basically working like a factory, assembling and cutting and using various machinery in a fairly repetetive nature. All of the tasks were interesting at first but got dull as time passed. One of the pieces of machinery, the cutter, was quite cool, it was a large knife on a conveyerbelt with a camera attatched. I got to control the camera to line it up with dots that are detected because they're a perfect magenta (CYMK colour, all settings on 0 except for M on 100) and then it cuts out any shape perfectly, following the magenta dots.
So, I'm not exactly sure what I'll be doing tomorow but I think later in the day I'll have a chance to cut out the characters from myposter to make some desk-side stands of Snake and Liquid. This depends on how busy the cutter is, however.
UPDATE:
Thursday was me standing in one place for eight hours framing prints. Much fun.
UPDATE:
Friday was odd jobs and watching people work for the morning, then finishing off all my Metal Gear stuff. So I now have three or four A2 cutouts of Snake and Liquid with a picture-frame stand on them (so you can put them on your desk or what have you) and eight or more A2 Metal Gear posters on various mediums. Coolio. Best thing about Friday though which can only be described in the wise words of 50 Cent in 50 Cent: Bulletproff: "Pay day mo-f****!" Yay! I got £50 on a HMV card which was completely unexpected. MY superviser dude said it was the first time they'd ever payed a Work Experience person because I had helped them meet a dealine with those terrible prints on Thursday. Huraah!...now I might go and buy Battlefield: Bad Company - yeah I know I said I hate it but I went on with a mate and we worked as an awesome team (both getting the top scores) in the two seater vehicles (tanks and choppers) and it was amazing.
NOTE(S): If you're reading this blog any time soon after 18:30 and wondering what the hell I'm going on about with this poster because you can't see any pictures of it, don't worry, I'm on my Dad's laptop right now but when I get home I'll have the file up and ready on GameSpot.
After you've read this, stay tuned: I'll probably be posting a new paragraph or so each day to update you (as if you're interested) on the day's goings on.
Oh yeah, and now anyone else who's on work experience has to do a blog too (Ben, Tom, Jonny, David etc).