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1. Production Reflection
Mel Nuttall

2. Process – Week 1
Week one of our final major project was largely based
around understanding our brief, brainstorming and
developing initial ideas and beginning our research. I
felt much more relaxed about the project when I
discovered that the brief was more open than I had
been expecting and I would be able to make a variety
of products that I’d had a few ideas about. Since I had
done this before in previous projects I found it fairly
easy to develop my ideas onto a mind map and choose
on. I already had an idea of what I wanted to do my
FMP on so I was able to have some ideas already.

3. Process – Week 1
Once I had completed my initial plans, I moved onto
starting my research. I started by looking at existing
magazines so that I could look at how they designed
their front covers to attract a reader’s attention. I then
took a screenshot of each magazine’s website to
analyse those too. Towards the end of the week, I
started to create a survey on survey monkey to get my
class, friends and family to complete. I also interviewed
two classmates with separate questions that I could
analyse the next week. The interviews were very useful
as it allowed my to realise that there were other people
that cosplayed or would at least be interested in
reading about/watching it.

4. Process – Week 2
The second week of my FMP project started with going
back to my research and analysing each of the current
products I had currently looked at to try and add more
detail in. I felt that adding in those extra points were very
useful and a good use of time that would help me in the
future. At this point I was starting to look back at the
results of my survey to see what some of my audience
research thought about what I might use or not use in
my products. But I decided to wait a little bit longer in
case I was able to get some more responses first. After
sending the survey to some of my other friends to

5. Process – Week 2
broaden the results of the audience research survey, I
returned to researching products while I waited for the
results. This was a better decision in my opinion as I
didn’t want to analyse the survey to then find other
people had answered it and the results had then
changed. I started to research a cosplay website that had
information on conventions and cosplay in general. I
thought it would be useful to see the difference between
websites more focused on the cosplay and conventions
and the ones more dedicated to selling magazines.

6. Process – Week 3
The third week of my fmp was all about starting
production experiments and finishing off my research.
For the experiments, I knew that this was my chance to
learn how to do things I couldn’t already do that could
The first experiment I did was to learn how to edit in a
character’s powers that I will most likely use in my own
project. At first, finding a tutorial that gave the
effect that I wanted was a bit more difficult
and frustrating than I
thought, but then I found
one that I could use part
of and then experiment on
my own with the effect.

7. Process – Week 3
Once I got started with creating a new brush tool and
starting to add them onto the image, I really enjoyed
testing different blending modes and glows to get the
image to how I wanted it to look. Once I was happy, I did
the same to the other image I had found. I liked learning
how to make a new brush to make the whole process
easier and definitely a technique I will use in my
products.

8. Process – Week 3
The second experiment that I did was unfortunately not
as successful as I had hoped, but I’m glad that I
discovered this now so that I do not plan for it in my
final project and then realise that I am unable to do so.
While starting to see if turning a video that could look
like a scene from Borderlands was fun to start and try,
towards the end, trying to get the cel-shaded effect
that I was after began to get frustrating. I’d had my
doubts at the start of the experiment but I wanted to at
least try it first before discarding the idea entirely.

9. Process – Week 3
This unfortunately didn’t go to plan and even after over
an hour, I still wasn’t able to get the look I had been
after and eventually decided that I wasn’t going to
spend any more time on it. I wanted to make sure that I
had time to finish off my research and look at my
updated survey results. This is what I then moved onto
Afterwards, though still a little
disappointed that what I’d had an idea
for wouldn’t be possible for my time
frame. I analysed the remainder of my
survey results which is where the week
came to an end.

10. Process – Week 4
I began the fourth week of my production by spending most
of Tuesday to finish my proposal word document. The part
that I always find most difficult is the audience as I don’t like
to stereotype people on what they like based on gender etc.
That’s why I usually try to have my products appeal to people
because they like it, not because they’re a certain group of
people. The good thing about cosplay is that it is for everyone,
regardless of any stereotype. The rest I found much easier,
except for the name for I hadn’t decided what name I was
going to use next. I moved onto planning, where I set out how
each of my different website pages would look, both having a
layout plan with just writing, but then having a copy

11. Process – Week 4
underneath that with an example picture to see if the layout
actually seemed practical. I found this useful in helping to
visualise how my website would look. I also added two slides
for what my magazine front cover would look like. This was
fairly simple to do except at some points so I did spend more
time in it than I’d planned.
I used shapes to create a
template, that I could then
change to add in example
pictures that I took from
my mood boards.

12. Process – Week 4
Once I was happy I moved on to the contingency, health and
safety planning. Since my products involve several different
locations, the health and safety had more to plan for than if I
remained in college the whole time. Towards the end of my
week I started to work on my style sheets and fonts. I started
to look at different sets of colours that I thought would work
well for my website. I found it difficult to find a font that I
thought would be readable and nice to look at but while also
following the pattern that my researched products seemed to
have. This I found frustrating but eventually I managed to find
a font that I thought fit the categories.

13. Process – Week 5
On the first day of week 5, our class had the chance to start to
move on to production if we were ready to. I spent the first
day by starting to structure my website. I set up the names of
each page I was going to have with the template layout I’d
picked. I also set the text colours to be slightly different so the
user would know which page they were on and which they
were hovering over.
I was also aware that I hadn’t completed all of my planning, so
once I had gotten the basic template for my website done I
moved back onto finishing my planning. With regards to my
storyboard I definitely found this difficult at first. It was

14. Process – Week 5
mainly due to not being sure how to start it. I managed to
solve this problem by listening to some of the royalty free
music I found, which gave me the inspiration to at least start
the storyboard. On the Wednesday, I started to add colour to
my website and to add in the written content in preparation
to add in my images soon. This was a little frustrating at first
but once I managed to find a colour that I thought worked
well it was much easier to work the text and images, that I
would later replace with my actual photographs. Once I’d
written part of the text for my website, I moved back to my
storyboard. Thursday was similar to Wednesday as I managed
to completely finish any of the remaining structuring of my

15. Process – Week 5
website in terms of font, colour, text and where my images
plus the video would go. This involved quite a lot of changing
wording and the manner of the text but eventually I was
happy with the text. On Friday, I did quite a lot of changes to
the community page. I had decided to make an Instagram
page as I thought that it would be a likely addition if the site
were real. This way I would be able to have another way of
displaying my photographs and eventually my video. At this
point I also realised that I could add an Instagram feed to my
website so I added that to my ‘community’ page, although I
thought that this could change later.

16. Process – Week 6
looked much
better too.
For some of
the images
where the
The first two days of week six definitely felt more like the start
of production. I started to edit the photographs I had taken
over the weekend in photoshop. The effect I used was the
‘lomo effect’ along with some colour grading too see if I could
get the style Borderlands is so famous for. I enjoyed adding
the lomo effect to my images because I really liked how my
images turned out. The photographs seemed so much more
aesthetically appealing and it meant other effects added on,

17. Process – Week 6
background was less blurred. I wondered if I’d be able to give
those backgrounds a more Borderlands cel-shaded look to fit
with the cosplay. Not all of the pictures needed it but it was
fairly simple to do. I then ran into a problem about where I
would upload my photographs. I wasn’t sure about where I
should have my pictures shown, either directly on my website
or on the Instagram account. This was due to the fact that the
Wix album app wasn’t as easy to set up as I had thought.
That’s when I’d had the idea to possibly show my cosplay
photographs on Instagram and link that to the website.
However, I later decided how I could incorporate both, to have
the portfolio on the website in the albums where I could
organise the pictures by character and use Instagram for
something else. On Thursday, I started to upload some of the

18. Process – Week 6
pictures to my website for the galleries on both the ‘home’
and ‘about’ pages. I also changed the layout of my website a
bit by swapping the positions of the magazine front cover and
the Instagram feed. This made more sense to me as then
more of the content there was linked, and I could use the
homepage to display the Instagram posts that references to
the rest of the site. Once I’d done this I moved to sorting out
my portfolio. This proved to
be very frustrating and
confusing because at first, I
was confused by how I
actually organised and set up
the first ‘album’. Eventually I
managed to sort that out and

19. Process – Week 6
it showed up on my website. However, when I went onto the
preview mode, the album didn’t always show up. Instead it
would show some text saying ‘loading’, although the album
never did load. I find this very frustrating and hopefully I can
find a way to fix it. On Friday, I started to come up with a
potential look for my magazine front cover. While I had
thought about using on of the new pictures I hope to get over
the weekend, I thought it would be a good idea to check that
the design I’d
planned looked
professional enough.
I wasn’t sure with
the end result so I
decided to leave it
until next week.

20. Process – Week 7
Having taken some more cosplay pictures over the weekend, I
spent Tuesday to work on starting to filter through and edit
my photographs. I’d kept the brush pre-sets from my
experiments in editing a Scarlet Witch cosplay so I knew I
could use that technique for mine. I used the same process
with the Scarlet Witch and Tracer photographs as I did with
the Borderlands ones of adding the lomo effect and then
sorting out the colour balances. For the Tracer pictures, I
wanted to make sure that the colours were bright to match
the art style of the game, Overwatch. With the Scarlet Witch
ones, I wanted to make sure that the red colours were vibrant
to contrast with the green of the trees behind. This I enjoyed
doing a lot, although the colour corrections and then adding
in the powers did take some time for each one.
The rest of the week however, I used to gain some more

21. Process – Week 7
photographs for my photography portfolio. One of my friends
brought her cosplay into college and we used the studio to
create a photoshoot for her Red Riding Hood cosplay. I found
this really fun to do as it meant I could get different types of
shots and have more control over the lighting. My next job
was then to start editing them in the similar style I had edited
the rest of my pictures. I used the lomo effect to draw a
viewer’s attention to the focus of each picture. For one of the
pictures I also used a blank photograph of a forest so that I
could combine the forest and one of the Red Riding Hood
photos. This is what I had decided I would use for my
magazine front cover and used the colour scheme of the
cosplay for the font colours.

22. Process – Week 8
The week after half term went extremely quickly because, due
to other classes having exams, our class missed seven lessons
of class time. And because of the exams, it meant that I
couldn’t come into college when I usually would to continue
with coursework production. At home, I was able to make
improvements to my existing work such as adding in an
audience profile and increasing the depth of my analysis. The
production however I wasn’t able to make anymore progress
on as I didn’t have access to the Mac or the required software
at home on my laptop. This I found frustrating as it meant I
wasn’t able to do as much in my newly found free time as I
would have liked; on the bright side, however, it did mean I
had more time to concentrate on my improvements so I could
catch up on my production next week.

23. Process – Week 8
During the lessons I was present for however, I spent them
continuing to edit through my pictures. This did take longer
than I thought I would have since I would add an effect but
then not be sure if I liked the result or not. I also started to
make improvements to my existing PowerPoints, such as
adding in an audience profile and a more in depth analysis.

24. Process – Week 9
This week was dedicated to finishing up my production and
starting my evaluation. Tuesday and Wednesday were spent
making improvements to my magazine cover on a separate
file so that I could look at both versions I made and then
decide which one I liked best, as well as editing any final
photographs I had to do. Then I could upload them to my
website and publish that. I also uploaded some pictures to the
Instagram page I created for Cosplay HQ that appeared on the
site.
On Thursday I started to write my evaluation, beginning with
my research and what I thought went well and what could
have been done better. I then began my peer assessments, to
see what other people thought of my photography portfolio,

25. Process – Week 9
both good parts and points for suggested improvements.
Deciding that I would return to my summary of the peer
assessment later, I returned to the rest of my evaluation.