Monday, 27 May 2013

Review of Game Art Design, Year 1



Well, It’s been quite a fast hectic year, and I know I haven’t barely updated my blog at all like I said I would at the start of the year, but I’ve learned some lessons and developed my basic knowledge of 3D modelling and importing to a game engine, I’ve developed my craft in 2D visual design, and I can clearly see a big improvement from when I first came onto the course, I’ve met some amazing new people and even joined the theater society and did the end of year performance with them of “A Chorus of Disapproval” There’s been a lot of ups and downs but overall I think I do want this career in game art design. 

 Cover Photo

At the start of the year when I was first met with 3D programming it was quite daunting and overwhelming, but over time and heathers tutorials weren’t really helping me all that much and the ones on blackboard but thanks to the help of Mike Pickton’s YouTube tutorials and my 2nd and 3rd year colleagues they helped me to get my head around 3D a lot faster and better.

I’d like to thank them for what they’ve done for everyone in first year, we couldn’t have done 3D without you 2nd and 3rd years, especially Mike Pickton and Ben Keeling my main guru’s as they were. I’m really going to miss all the 3rd years, they really helped us get settled in and were all really genuinely funny and friendly to us.

 I liked it more than visual design, because it was so fast and efficient compared to the hours of sketching for 2D visual design and then shading and rendering detail which took ages. The only thing I despise about 3D at the moment is texturing, it takes the longest amount of time and can really get on my nerves some times. After Christmas and with the building project completed I was completely in love with 3D game production.


But during the first few months of the course I had a huge problem with myself.


My procrastination issue which has haunted me ever since I started 6th form college, I don’t know how it developed and gotten worse, why it had become this bad but I really need to put an end to it, even for the visual design deadline I was up 3-4 nights in a row doing all-nighters trying to finish as many projects as I could. Which was very idiotic.

I learned a lot about drawing and perspective as well as colours while doing the course as well, even if I did procrastinate a hell of a lot.

As for the social side of things, well let’s just say it didn’t go as well as I’d hoped, with me living at home I never really got to experience the full university experience with that being living on campus with people I’d never met before and going out with them to have fun and whatnot. I would have to walk for 30mins through a pretty crappy area just to get town. I hoped I could’ve gotten to go out a lot more with everyone but oh well. Life never goes to plan. But this made me decide to get a house with 3 of my fellow game art students, Ben, Kat and Findara for next year to experience what it’s like, which I’m looking forward to tremendously. It might be a hammer in my wallet but I think I


need this. To get out of my parent’s house and live on my own independently and sort of discover myself and develop myself as a person.

But back to the first year. I find that I didn’t really learn much through listening to Chris' lectures on drawing techniques apart from the perspective drawings, Instead I would learn by just constant work. Draw, and draw and draw on my own constantly and look at other artist’s and my friend’s artwork and see how they did it and then try to imitate the technique, I guess that’s how I like to do my art.

The one regret I have for this year, is again my procrastination, and just never putting my full 100% into any of the work I did, I couldn’t really bring my lazy self to pump out work using my fullest potential in any of the work I did.

But what I learned was to see only potential in work, no matter how good it is, it can always be better, not perfect, but better and I’m talking about my work ethic too, and how I plan and time manage things. I tend to work best in pressured conditions which might be strange but it really brings out the best in me.

I hope to change all the bad habits during this summer break and come back and completely own the course in 2nd and have everything under control.



But aside from the bad things there were good things, I would always stay in the labs till around 8pm-9pm just to socialize and get my work done since I live far away, and then my dad would pick me up so I wouldn’t have to walk home in the dark. But I did go out on the group trips that were organized by our own game art Facebook 2012 page and had a laugh with the game art “crew”

I had some really great times with my friends here at Game Art Design and I hope I see all of them next year, and I’ll be on my game for next year definitely!


Here is a link of some of the work I should have posted up in the blogs.

 https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.113860632102353.20786.100004352501105&type=1&l=c99f78545e


  

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