Amy Carter Interior Design
Week 3-Day 1 16th April 2018
During the morning I started rendering a few shots of the room I had built and designed last week in the highest HD level possible by taking shots of my room from different angles to show the entirety of the room. Due to the size of the room I had designed the renders took quite a bit of time to completely render so while my renders were running in the background I finished off drawing my floor plans and side elevations of my room in DraftSight. When drawing the floor plans and elevations I included the main pieces of furniture in the plans such as the TV board and library wall that I designed and the couch and coffee table to give a better understanding of the size of the room, the layout, and the flow of the room. I also included the Neville Johnson drawing boarder and filled it in with my own details for the job to give my drawings and renders a more professional finish.
Once I had the floor plans, side elevations and renders complete I then proceeded to create a mood board that showcased the core images that inspired and influenced my overall design and by doing this I am now able to show how my design came about from start to finish by demonstrating the inspiration and influences behind my final design. Upon reflection of the project I was set by the Neville Johnson team I can say that I have really enjoyed my time here so far and I have also really enjoyed the task they gave me. Even though it was at times challenging, in particular when I has to make my SketchUp models for my independent project and get them all to scale, I was eventually able to overcome these challenges which for me was a massive confidence boost as SketchUp has been something I have struggled with in the past. However, being able to do a project with complete creative freedom was really exciting to me as it allowed me to really explore my own personal style in a professional environment. Plus in my opinion this project was a good and effective use of my time because of the fact that I was able to do a whole project from start to finish, that was the exact same type of work the rest of the team do on a daily basis, so this really showed me the type and level of work that is expected in a professional environment.
Week 3-Day 2 17th April 2018
During the morning I was given a new, quick one day project as I was almost finished with my individual project. The one day project was a live project for a current client that wanted a new dressing room designing. I was asked to try and complete this whole job within a day so that I could experience what its like to do a whole job from start to finish in the same kind of time frame that they work on. Being challenged with completing a whole job, start to finish in a day did feel a bit daunting and scary to me at first because so far I haven't done this so I was a bit worried about not being able to do it. However, regardless of my concerns as to whether I would be able to get all the work I had been set done in a day I was more then happy and also excited to take on the challenge. The first thing I did for this job was build the structure/walls of the room in ArtiCAD and set the ceiling height. Once I had then built the walls of the room I then had the colour the walls, ceiling and floor as similar to the clients as I could based off of the pictures I had of the clients room. Also using these pictures as a reference I then went into SketchUp to build the windows and doors that are already in the clients room as they wanted to keep them the same. Once I had built these two items I then imported them into the ArtiCAD room that I had just built and then edited the colours/textures/materials of these two items so that they exactly matched the clients.
I then started to add in the pieces of furniture that the clients want in their room to make their dressing room, and for some of the pieces of furniture I had to resize them to the clients dimensions and specifications. After I had then placed in all the furniture, coloured the room and added in some down lighting, I then proceeded to add colour/texture/material to the pieces of furniture I had placed in the room so that it matched exactly what the clients had asked for which was chrome rails, Premium White Larch woodgrain and for some of the drawer fronts to be painted in the colour 'driftwood'. Once I had all the furniture in and coloured and the rest of the room done to match the clients specifications I then started dressing the room so that when I produced renders of it, it will look more realistic. I managed to complete to whole job from start to finish and render various shots of it within the day which I was very happy with as this meant I was able to complete the job in the time frame I was given which allowed me to experience what its like to work to a real deadline.
Week 3-Day 3 18th April 2018
During the morning I had to revisit the job I was working on yesterday as because it is a live job their was a few amendments that the clients wanted to be made so therefore I had to go back into the ArtiCAD file of their job, make these changes and then make a new set of renders so that they could now see what their dressing room would look like with these changes.
Once I had made the changes to the job and had completed the renders I then started a new live job for a bedroom. I started by drawing up the room in ArtiCAD, setting the ceiling height and then colouring the walls, floor and ceiling the same as shown in the client pictures of their current bedroom. Then I went over to SketchUp to build the door and window which was in the clients bedroom so that I could then import them into the ArtiCAD file. Once I had done I then did a quick low resolution render of the room to see if the room looked like it was the same size as it does in the pictures as I wasn't given any dimensions for the room. Not being given the dimensions for this job was very annoying and did make the job in hand much more difficult and tedious, however I do feel it was good practice for me to experience this and to have to work on a job that had quite a lack of information as it forced me to have to work around these issues and figure it out on my own; plus I am sure that this kind of thing happens quite often and then when I begin to work in the industry full time I will sometimes encounter problems and challenges like this that I will need to be able to overcome. When looking at the room again it seemed like it was a bit small so I went back and readjusted the size of the room until I was happy with how it looked. I then went in and added the furniture the client wanted which was a wardrobe set, which I also coloured by adding the materials/colours the clients requested.
Week 3-Day 4 19th April 2018
During the morning I carried on building up the live job I was working on yesterday by firstly applying colours/textures/materials to the window and door so that it matched those of the clients. Once I had figured out the size of the room, coloured it and put the wardrobe in I then proceeded to dress the room with items such as a bed, night stands, lamps, down lights etc. and then added a scene behind the window and adjusted the sun light levels so that the renders would appear more realistic for the clients to receive the best possible view of what their new bedroom could look like. This is the last live project I will be working on while here so that for the rest of the day and for the duration of tomorrow I can spend my time photoshopping my renders so that they will look perfect and extremely realistic.
The last job I did took longer than expected to complete because the employee who went to the clients house and conducted the survey did not give any measurements for the room except for the ceiling height and the measurements for the furniture the client wanted in their bedroom, therefore I didn't have a lot to work off when building the room so it was all down the guess work based off of the clients photos which I did find rather frustrating but I was happy that I was able to overcome these obstacles with a bit of time and trail and error work. Therefore, by the time I had completed this job I was a bit pushed for time so I was only able to create low resolution renders of the inside of the room so that I was able to quickly show how it would look.
During the afternoon I did some more SketchUp work/training with one of the girls on the team but this time I was looking at a more complicated and odd shaped room. For this I built as much of the room as I could in the afternoon. By the time I had finished the day I managed to build the rooms to just above the window level which meant building the walls, skirting, and two different types of windows. Being able to get in one last quick session of SketchUp training was really beneficial to me because as I have said SketchUp has been a program that I have sometimes struggled with so I was really happy to be able to get the chance to do a little bit of extra training with a member of the team as learning how to use SketchUp the way they use it has really simplified the program for me, making it much easier for me to use and understand which will hopefully benefit me further when I need to use SketchUp independently.
Week 3-Day 5 20th April 2018
During the morning I had a bit of Photoshop training with one of the girls in the group. We did this so that I could learn how to use the software better as so far I haven't used photoshop a lot so far, so having the opportunity to use the system and have some one to one teaching on how to use it is something I feel I will greatly benefit from and having this brief practice will hopefully help me in the future when using Photoshop on my own. We also went through Photoshop so that I could learn how to use it so that I could edit the renders of the different jobs I have completed to a professional level so that they would almost look like they were photographs of an actual, already existing room. Once I had been shown how to photoshop my images and the general processes used to get them looking to a high quality, I then continued to edit all of my photosets on my own. I did this until I was happy with the final result and was ready to print out the renders.
Walk-in Wardrobe Photoset
Individual Project Floor Plans, Elevations and Photoset
Overall, I was very happy and delighted with my final set of renders as I personally feel I did good, high quality job and that these renders reflect how much I learnt whist here in such a short time, as well as how much my software skills have improved and how well I have done while working here. I have really enjoyed my three weeks here and have had a great time. The work I was set was fun and interesting because it was something new that I haven't done before, however at times I did find certain aspects of the jobs a bit boring and tedious like dressing the room but I do understand that this makes a big difference to how good a render will appear. However, after spending three weeks here I think for me personally the kind of work I was doing and the kind of work Neville Johnson do as a whole wouldn't be something I could see myself doing for the rest of my life because at times I felt like the work I was being given felt very repetitive even though I was working on different jobs. At times I also found sitting at a desk all day to be quite boring and tedious and I wish I had been able to have the opportunity to go on site visits or go and see the showrooms and be able to experience the kind of work that gets done beyond the desk.