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Study tips
Scale – Why is the scale of things important?
Posted: 11/02/21 09:21 |
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I’m a tutor on OCA’s Interior Design courses. I was sent images of a model made by one of my students. It represented a pavilion design and was well made and interesting to look at. Trouble is, I had no idea how big it was supposed to be. The dictionary definition of scale is “The […]
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The Show Must Go On: Digital Possibilities in the Covid Era for Writers and Learners
Posted: 10/02/21 09:46 |
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I am sure as a distance learner, you’ll likely be used to incorporating different technologies into your learning experience – I was certainly Zooming ‘before it was cool’ thanks to OCA meetings and I can’t help but notice how many learning tools we seem to be early adopters of. We’re also lucky to have […]
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Top of the ‘greasy’ pole!
Posted: 07/02/21 09:36 |
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Those of you who follow our OCA Creative Writing social media – in particular, the @ocawriters Twitter account – may have spotted a few celebratory posts earlier in the year. When we learned the course had achieved 100% student satisfaction in the 2020 NSS survey, we were all absolutely thrilled. ‘NSS’ stands for National Student […]
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Writing Great Visual Descriptions: Less or More?
Posted: 05/02/21 01:11 |
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When practicing writing visual descriptions, the scriptwriter works towards applying the few technical rules that are required by scriptwriting standards: scene heading with indication of time and space use of active verbs in the present tense brief paragraphs no camera directions describe only what can be seen and heard Their application aims at shaping the […]
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Foundations Music: Resources
Posted: 05/02/21 09:08 |
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Sometimes during study we can hit a stumbling block which we can’t immediately solve by ourselves. When this happens, please don’t suffer in silence or let your studies fall by the wayside. Instead, reach out to your fellow students or your tutor if you’ve hit a brick wall and don’t know how to overcome it. […]
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Stuff that spins out of now
Posted: 20/01/21 08:57 |
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At the beginning of October 2020, Helen Rosemier organised a Momentum Session with the theme Contamination/Curation, which was led by tutor, Bryan Eccleshall. Open to OCA students from all disciplines, the idea was to split all participants into groups of five with the brief of creating a curatorial proposal for an exhibition comprising works submitted […]
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A conversation between Foundations Drawing student David Csaba and tutor Cheryl Huntbach
Posted: 09/12/20 09:09 |
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It may be interesting for prospective students, and others to know a little about your background, your life, and art experience prior to your OCA studies- for example from where you originate (how this may or may not inform your own studies / drawing work / process. My name is Csaba David and I have […]
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Using Biological Curiosities for Fiction Ideas
Posted: 07/12/20 09:22 |
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There’s a wonderful clip on YouTube that shows an octopus disappearing into the background and becoming, as a consequence, invisible. This is an attribute shared by other cephalopods such as the cuttlefish, one of which I met whilst snorkelling in Indonesia. The water there is very clear, and the colourful marine life is plentiful and […]
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Sharing Reading Strategies
Posted: 27/11/20 10:25 |
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This post has developed out of conversations which were part of the Creative Arts group work sessions last year. These were exploring a range of approaches to combining practice and research. This got me thinking about reading and how it can underpin practice based research and so it would be useful to share some tips […]
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Visual research in action
Posted: 02/11/20 09:06 |
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All design briefs begin with research questions. These questions should hopefully lead to ideas, that can be turned into possible design practice.
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