Group Presentation

Getting together before we present our presentation was the first thing we do, as we all gathered what we had looked into to discuss about Scientific Illustration. Unfortunately, one group member was away so it became a 4-man group. Two of the group members had put a lot of input of slides showcasing different images and works of the topic, as well as an interview that one of them had done for the presentation and overall we had too much slides to cover, but we decided to cut the time slightly short on each slide to keep things interesting and going. Technically only 3 of us, me being the last one to put my slides together at the last minute, had done research, as the one member who didn’t find the topic interesting, did not do any research of his own for the group presentation. So to make up for not contributing, we have him introduce the presentation for the audience.

After a short introduction the two others who had a lot of input discuss their own findings and research which went surprisingly long but they both managed to keep at it at a steady pace throughout until it was my turn.

I was a little shaky at first but managed to stay on track, the only thing I was worried about was whether I ended up repeating myself, and since I don’t have anything I could read from apart from my small notes, I usually pause quite often to figure out what I wanted to say. With only two slides I do feel there needs to be more, though with a lot of content provided by the other two, we didn’t want to extend the maximum slides we can only go for (20 slides) as it might drag the presentation. However, the main focus of the presentation was to explore scientific illustrations both historically and in the present, as my part is just a little extension as to what scientific illustrations can some-what extend into. Though with an extra 1 or 2 slides would have been good, but it doesn’t really bother me as much as long as I got something to say and share for my part as a group member. 

We all didn’t rehearse as we just put together what we had done at the last minute, but I’m sure each of us knew what we wanted to talk about so we were pretty confident. When I did my part it was not scripted, partially due to the reason why I had not put my slides in until the last minute, which was my fault to be honest, but I was satisfied with the things I wanted to say, though it could of have been a little more fluent in terms of not repeating and pausing at some point, which could of have been avoided.

During the session the presentations of the other groups were good: some were scripted while others have a lot of information on the screen as they do their part, which I didn’t mind at all. I have general knowledge of the topics that were discussed in each group but managed to find some interesting facts, such as the wages the artists were getting paid and the backgrounds of artists of how they start and became what they are now. Sadly no notes were taken but I mainly listen in to the information that the other groups are sharing. Some groups were a little similar to one another in terms of topic, such as concept art and children’s book illustration, though each group’s findings are different so at least there were some different content being shared under the same career field.

The only thing that I learned was pretty much from my mistakes, and that was to leave things at the last minute which ended up rushing the presentation, but this also include the fact that each one of us did their own part of the presentation, and we only came together to fit what we have together in the end before we present. Organising the slides together was ok but it did took some time to finalise what we want and luckily the group presentation did not start until a little later, which had brought us some time to fix and update it.