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FAO CAA Yr 1: Invisible Cities 2017 / Submission Checklist & Final Crit Requirements 19/10/2018


What follows are instructions for your crit presentations and reminders of what you need to present and submit on Friday, 19th October.  Please use your network of creative partners to ensure that everyone has seen this information and understood it.  Any queries, please leave a comment and I'll clarify.

A new CG animated adaptation of Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities is in pre-production. In response to the source material allocated to you at the briefing, you have been commissioned to produce 3 fully-resolved concept paintings of one of Calvino’s fantastical cities.

You have been asked to visualise your chosen city in three different types of shot:

1) Exterior Establishing Shot
2) Exterior Low Angle Shot
3) Interior Establishing Shot

Your concept paintings should be 16:9 and painted digitally.


You are asked to maintain a comprehensive blog archiving and annotating your creative development for the duration of the project. You should use the blog to reflect critically upon your own creative practise, the wider cultural and thematic context of the project, and engage collaboratively with your creative partners, peers and tutors.

Important! Your blog must include:

1) Your 3 finished concept paintings.

2) Your Invisible Cities 'Art Of' as Scribd document.

3) A minimum of a 100 developmental thumbnails exploring all of Calvino’s cities.

4) Animated GIFs of your digital paintings in progress.

5) Research into your source material presented as a Scribd document.

6) Your influence maps.

7) Your One Point, Two Point & Three Point perspective exercises.

8) Your Concept Artist ‘Who’s Who?’ as a Scribd document.

9) Reviews of the Space Oddities Film programme.  Please note – in addition to and support of your own critique, your reviews must include a minimum of 3 quotations from 3 different published sources + poster art + supporting stills. Please note - Harvard Method must be used for all quotations and all illustrations to be referenced correctly. Reviews are to include bibliography and illustration list.

10) All Digital painting exercises from Photoshop workshops.

11) Your final submission must include a short reflective statement. A reflective statement is a statement in which the student considers their experience of a project. Reflective statements are used to understand past events, learn lessons and identify best practice.

You will present on crit day from a blog-embedded Scribd document that should, in terms of structure, follow the order of slides as given below.
  1. Title page, giving your name, unit title and date of presentation.
  2. The name of your city.
  3. Your definitive 'visual concept' influence map.
  4. Your final exterior establishing shot.
  5. Your build-up sequence of your exterior establishing shot.
  6. Your final exterior low angle shot.
  7. Your build-up sequence of your exterior low angle shot.
  8. Your final interior establishing shot.
  9. Your build-up sequence of your interior establishing shot.
  10. Your three concept paintings together.
We expect a high level of professionalism from CAA students, so please give the preparation of your crit presentation the requisite care and attention. Your presentations should be branded, spell-checked and polished.  Don't clog your content with unnecessary typography etc. Your presentation should serve your content sympathetically.  Sensibly, your Crit Presentation and Art Of should share a visual language - but they're not the same presentation (see examples below).

Keep it simple - only include what you've been asked to include.


Example Crit Presentation




Example Art Of




Important: please note, your Invisible Cities crit starts at 10am sharp.  You need to be in the CAA baseroom by 9.45am at the latest

Please note: unauthorised non-attendance at a final crit will be counted as a non-submission of work.

Non-submission of work = fail at 0%

The order in which you'll be presenting will be randomised, which means any one of you may be presenting first! 

If circumstances beyond your control* prevent you from attending on time, you must contact Hazel Searles before 10am. Your project management and professionalism counts - there is an assessment criteria against these skills, remember!

And finally...



And a note to any 2nd/3rd years - your input on crit day, as always, is welcome!

*But not issues in regard to last-minute technical problems that reflect poor project management.  No student should be working on the morning of crit day. Thursday is your deadline, not Friday.

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