Honours in Design Computing
Bachelor of Design Computing (Honours)
For the Bachelor of Design Computing, the honours degree requires an extra year of full-time study engaged solely in a research task under the supervision of a member of academic staff. This is in addition to the three years of study for the pass degree.
The award of honours is an avenue by which the best students can be recognised. It provides training in research practice and methodology and provides evidence of your ability to formulate a problem, research and investigate it and to write a reasoned response to it. By its nature, an honours degree carries more weight or prestige than the pass degree. It is highly regarded by employers and other universities. Universities regard honours degrees as a training ground for higher research degrees such as the Doctor of Philosophy. Nowadays, a PhD is almost a prerequisite to a career in academia.
In order to qualify for the honours degree candidates must satisfy the requirements for the pass degree with a Weighted Average Mark of at least 70 and in addition successfully complete 48 credit points consisting of a research thesis. Honours may only be undertaken on a full time basis.
Download the application form for honours.
The University of Sydney is offering Honours Scholarships for 2008, value $5,000.
Faculties will be awarding Honours Scholarships on the basis of academic merit. Students currently enrolled at the University of Sydney or other universities intending to undertake an additional Honours year at the University of Sydney in 2008 are eligible to apply.
Faculties also offering Honours Scholarships on the basis of equity plus merit are: Arts, Science, and Health Sciences. Students currently enrolled at the University of Sydney or other universities intending to undertake an additional Honours year at the University of Sydney are eligible to apply.
Application forms can be downloaded from the honours scholarships webpage or obtained from the Scholarships Unit, Mackie Bldg K01, University of Sydney NSW 2006
Recent Honours Students
Andrea Lau, BDesComp (Honours Graduate) 2007
Andrea's Honours year involved working with Junk Theory, a multimedia project involving images, film, and sound, projected onto a Chinese Junk. She was featured in the Daily Telegraph careers section as a Visual Information Designer.
Along with one of our Design Computing PhD students, Joanne Jakovich, the two were finalists in the first Google Australia Anita Borg Scholarship, out of just 16 awarded places.
Age: 22
Work: SeeMyVoice - Social Information/Data Visualisation (or infovis). SeeMyVoice visualises chat transcripts stored by MSN Messenger. It aims to highlight people's style of chatting and increase understanding of our online social interaction. Each person is represented by a coloured wave which ebbs and fluctuates according to message length and the time taken between messages.
Toolkit: (What software/hardware did you use to create the work), Java 2 SDK
Inspirations: Computer-generated art (John Maeda), op-art (Bridget Riley), the infovis research community, nature, and all the crazy people who spend too much time in front of the computer and create amazing stuff!
Ambitions: To have it all: a balance between PhD and research, plus freelance or studio-based web/graphic design. I also hope to reduce the gap (just a little) between research in infovis and its application in society.
Contact: Portfolio
Other Honours Graduates
- John Lee, BDesComp 2004
is currently working as a developer for web development company, Fatpublisher). - Mitch Page, BDesComp (Hons) 2006
is currently pursuing a PhD, while working for his own web design company. - Jason Green, BDesComp 2004
is currently a Digital Creative at MC Saatchi - William Hwang, Josh Lobo & Andrew Wong. BDesComp 2004
started their own design company, RandomBlowup - Andrew Wallace, BDesComp 2005
is currently working as a media production artist at MTV Australia, as well as his own web and media design company.
Mitchell Page, BDesComp (Hons) 2006
Age: 21
Mitch's honours project, TeamAwear, a wearable display for team sports was featured in the Sydney Morning Herald's Tech section in the article Technology gets a guernsey (November 21), at ABC as Sports shirt lights up in a flash, at New Scientist as Basketball stats shown live on players' shirts and various other news websites and blogs
To read more about this fantastic project, visit the TeamAwear research blog.
Work: This still is taken from a short 3D animated film titled 'Out With the Old'. The character is named 'Rufus'. This work is one of my favourites primarily because it it wasn't just about designing a 3D model. It was about creating a character and bringing him to life. Rufus is a teddy bear who wakes to find himself in a box full of rubbish on the side of the road. Rufus breaks out of the box and looks for a DIY solution to repair his tattered features. He comes across a lone bottle cap and uses this to replace his missing eye. Rufus then spots another box, this one with the words "For Sale" scrawled across the front. Rufus ceases his opportunity to be sold rather than thrown out, and dives into the new box. Upon jumping in it becomes evident this box was not all Rufus had intended it to be. As he jumps in, the box flaps close behind him to reveal the box actually says "Puppies For Sale". Pieces of Rufus then proceed to fly out of the box as it is tossed around. Finally the animation ends with Rufus' recently acquired eye flying out of the box and landing in front. If you wish to view a low-res version of this movie, please follow the appropriate link at mitchellpage.com.au.
Toolkit: The 3D animation was generated and rendered using 'Maya 6.0' by the software company Alias. 'Adobe Photoshop' was also used to generate image maps and textures. Finally 'Adobe Premiere Pro' was used to compile the individual animation frames into a playable animation.
Inspirations: Working in digital design, or any design for that matter, opens your eyes to your surroundings and you begin to appreciate every little thing. The inspiration for all of my work comes from everything I see in daily life. Advertisments, flyers, posters, magazines, product labels, architecture, film, music and ofcourse the web. If i see something I like I take a photo. My phone is filled them.
Ambitions: My dream has always been to work in an industry in which I can express myself creatively, while also having a bit of fun along the way. Undertaking the Design Computing degree was an excellent journey. The course work was both interesting and enjoyable, allowing each student to style their work based on their inidivdual creative tastes. The digital media industry is where I would ultimately like to end up, because there is nothing more satisfying than getting paid to do something you love. Having an interest in computer graphics and animation in high school, BDesComp was the perfect course for me. Each course subject allowed me to strengthen my current understanding of digital graphics and animation, while also building up skills in the latest design applications which I had had no previous experience with. With the aid of friendly and knowledgeable staff, no question was left unanswered.
Contact: mitchellpage.com.au
or
Jason Green, BDesComp 2004
Jason is a Digital Creative at MC Saatchi
What do you do in your job?
What brought you to design computing in the first place?
What skills have you taken from the degree to help in your job?
Working in a company like MC & Saatchi means that Jason can work with well-known clients, such as Optus. For Optus, Jason works on the ZooBUZZ newsletter, which he designs, builds, and manages. His great work on this project allowed him to also move into an e-magazine, concepting and building animations on a periodic basis. |
In the following series of animated Christmas cards for Tourism Australia, Jason came up with the creative and design concept. Rather than creating the card itself, Jason was able to sketch up his ideas and present it to others to have his creativity realised by someone specialised in 3D modelling.
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RandomBlowup Pty Ltd officially came to this world in the early months of the year 2005 under the watchful eyes of William Hwang, Josh Lobo and Andrew Wong. All three are recent top graduates of The University of Sydney's Bachelor of Design Computing. At RandomBlowup, we provide industry leading solutions to all forms of client needs. Whether it be a state-of-the-art, highly complicated 3D animation or a simple design for a business card, the RandomBlowup team is up to the challenge. To find out more about RandomBlowup, visit their website.
William Hwang, BDesComp 2004
What does your current position involve?
As Direcotor of RandomBlowup, I’m involved in all key decisions that are made by the directors of the company, anything from approving future financial investment choices to simple decisions such as the design of our website. As director, I also have responsibilities for the company’s public relation, human resource and usually fill in the role as project manager for any projects that involve 3D modelling and animation.
How have you used the skills and/or knowledge gained from your degree in your current position?
Most certainly; the beauty with the course was that it gave me knowledge in a vast area of design and not just limited to one area. The key difference between university education and TAFE/other institution is the fact that university education makes us think beyond what we are taught; it allow us to explore and develop more efficient and effective manner of utilising our skills. In saying this, that’s why RandomBlowup is always aiming to be one step ahead of everyone due to our desire to keep improving and lead in innovation in the design industry.
What do you enjoy most about your job?
The challenge that comes with the job; this is not just another 9-to-5 office job with the same old routine. Every job, every project that we work on is different in terms of deadline, style, budget, creativity etc, and with each job, I’m personally challenged to meet not only demands by our clients, but creating something that is innovating and beneficial to RandomBlowup’s future. I’m also very lucky and honoured to work with two individuals, Josh Lobo and Andrew Wong, who are both great mates and exemplary colleagues.
Josh Lobo, BDesComp 2004
What does your current position involve?
Being the director of Flash and Multimedia Design, my role is to participate in the development of Flash based media. These include mainly website development, but extends to corporate presentations, and multimedia packages. My role as the company director allows me to participate in financial and business decisions.
How have you used the skills and/or knowledge gained from your degree in your current position?
The technical skills like using Photoshop, Flash and Maya have all been essential in the work that we do. I also believe that some of the theory subjects have helped us to establish a greater understanding of the design problem, and appropriate ways to deal with it.
What do you enjoy most about your job?
The flexibility of hours is great. One day I might work 15 hours, but then the next I can take a break and only work 5 hours.
Did you experience any difficulty in adjusting to working life from uni life?
Going from uni life to the real world was fairly full on. Since we have chosen to start our own business, we have to attend to the creative and the business sides of things at the same time. Uni doesn’t really prepare you for that.
Andrew Wong, BDesComp 2004
What does your current position involve?
As a joint director of RandomBlowup, I share the job of overseeing the running of the company (Formulating and maintaining business financial and marketing structure), as well as liaising with potential and current clients to seek out their unique design requirements.
As a designer, I work on our design projects, whether it be 3D animation & modeling, web, graphic or multimedia design. Depending on the scope of a project, this would involve either working individually or collaborating with the other two.
It also involves fun.
How have you used the skills and/or knowledge gained from your degree in your current position?
All the skills and knowledge learnt from my degree have been used as a foundation for the real-world application. From this foundation, it’s a matter of figuring out how to apply these skills (whether it be design related or how to approach a project or client) to the real world scenario.
What do you enjoy most about your job?
The fact that we get to design, play and create – it’s not really a job!
Did you experience any difficulty in adjusting to working life from uni life?
Not really – I’m lucky to be associated with Josh and Will – we basically help each other out.
Andrew Wallace, BDesComp 2005
Age: 27
Work: Image from ‘see what I feel’ which was created as a major submission for Virtual Architecture in semester 2, 2005 under the guidance of Dr. Petra Gemeinboeck lecturer in digital media. ‘see what i feel’ took the human experience of anxiety and created a virtual, spatial representation.
Toolkit: Challenging common notions of both designing and inhabiting such a virtual environment, the project was created with the Unreal Game Engine (Unreal Engine2 Runtime) to create virtual environments to produce 3 videos showing the translation process from the real to unreal. The first video created was an interpretation of anxiety as in the real world. This became the footprint for the physical to virtual translation. The next video, using Unreal, was purely a virtual interpretation of the physical footprint. The final video combined these two to create an uncertain (surprising) boundary in-between, moving back and forth between these two realities. Adobe Premiere and Adobe Audition were both used for video and sound editing.
Inspirations: Swedish superstar designer Jens Karlsson, singer Bjork, Architect Neil Denari, digital media Lecturers Dr Petra Gemeinboeck and Dr Andrew Vande Moere.
Ambitions: To work in television graphics and video producing. Oh and also to be a pop star, but that’s a secret.
2006 Occupation: job hunting! But currently working for Sydney Theatre Company and also designing e-flyers and promotional material for a friends’ theatre company ‘square the circle’.
Web/Email Contact Details: andywallace.com.au