Creative collaboration: Week 2: 5/10/18: Team forming and ideas.

In Week 2 of Creative collaboration, it was time for our group to find teams to work in for the module and begin generating ideas for our animation projects. I was feeling rather nervous as I wasn't sure how to present myself towards a team, which is why for this weeks assignments we created creative CV's to show our talents and contributions that we can make towards the project. Mine was done in the style of a comic book page and given past experience with CV's I included only relevant information.




Creative CV.

Annabeth our tutor, then introduced us to the stages of team forming which would give us an idea of how our team would begin to take shape. I felt this seemed useful as it listed some of the key problems in teamwork such as disagreements and arguments among team members, learning to trust your teammates with their assigned role and how reliable they can be.







Team forming:

•  FORMING-Team members meet
• STORMING - Involves disagreements, unable to move forward and tests the groups ability.
• NORMING - Learning to trust your teammates, are you reliable? Moving forward and making progress.
• PERFORMING - Production stage everyone knows their job and work effectively together
• AJOINING - Developing the work practice, ending the team and reflecting to move forward to the next project  (Team blog)

Annabeth advised us to be very careful with wanting to work with people you know as it could lead to tension in the relationship or wanting to do what your friends doing. I realised this sounded like something important and this issue was brought up in one of my favorite Studio Ghibli films The Wind Rises. Friendships are important not competing.


Our exercise for today was to work with an element called the Belbin Team rolls done by Meredith Belbin a theorist. His diagram showed nine different rolls and Annabeth informed us that the benefit of this was so a team could become more balanced but could easily be thrown out of scale if team members have the same role. The nine rolls were as follows.

1. Shaper- helps to drive the team forward in their task.
2. Implementer- Brings self discipline to the group and creates a strategy to get the task done for effectively.
3. Coordinator- Can focus the teams objectives and bring order to keep them on task and not lose track of their deadline.
4. Team worker-  Provides support to the team and motivates them in times of need.
5. Resource Investigator- Begins to develop outside contacts and resources.
6. Plant- Comes up with innovative, ground breaking solutions and ideas.
7. Monitor Evaluator- Assesses the teams decisions both analytical and critical (observation and criticism)
8. Specialist- Experts in a particular field of study or subject matter (e.g Animation software).
9. Complete finisher- The member that the team relies on to make sure the tasks are completed and carried out to the teams best ability.

The idea of the exercise was to name areas of the animation pipeline or team members would fall under those catagories, such as for example a concept artist would fall under Plant. This I felt was something that I agreed with. We would be doing this in groups so I felt this was the best time to choose members for the team. In the small group of myself, Ben and Grace we worked on the exercise. I learned some things from this exercise such as the director being the group leader. In doing the exercise we learned that the three of us hadn't chosen specific teams and so we decided to form one for the group and this I felt make sense as we weren't chosen for teams and since we didn't know each other that well it would eliminate the working on the same subject issue.


The second part of the exercise was to create a nine sided pie chart of the different areas of the Belbin team rolls and sign our initials in those areas. I signed mine in three areas that I felt suited my talents and referenced my CV. These were Plant, Specialist and Team worker.


This was because I was a concept artist dreaming up ideas and designs, being an exerpt in some software and drawing programs and provide the team encouragement and motivation in times of need.


I felt our team was beginning to form with the arrival of Kieran and Stephan which fulfilled the 5 team members. In doing the exercise it would seem a large number of us wanted to be the plant, specialist and complete finisher (editor and sound editor.)


Having formed our team and done the exercise we began planning and suggesting ideas for the team project. Many ideas were contributed but team roles and final ideas would have to be decided as the weeks went on.


Looking back on today I would think it has eliminated many concerns I've had in terms of forming a team. In doing the exercise it has helped the team to identify and consider the roles that they wanted to fill. I do still have some concerns in terms of how well our team will work together and how best we should make our plans or what animation to approach but I feel that we can cross that bridge when we come to it. In hindsight I could see the sense in the two exercises and the steps in forming a team just to show us it wasn't a simple plug and play scenario.


I feel that I could've extended my team forming options to just more than just the people on the table with me but I am satisfied with the team we've formed and look forward to working with them on this project and see what we come up with.