Friday, 16 May 2014

Personal Review of the second year: Where I want to go, and how I plan on getting there.

It’s the end of the year, the second year and I think it’s been a great year, I learnt a lot of new techniques in 3D modelling, I worked in a group towards a project, creating an awesome gothic level, and I developed my visual designing skills. As always there is always room for improvement in my work ethic and the way I complete tasks, but I think I did alright this year.

 I’m almost at the end of my University experience, next year I will graduate and University will be over unfortunately, I will be out there on my own trying to get job in the games industry. So now would be a great time to start preparing myself and my portfolio, It’s time to get to a professional level, and to get there I will be investing my summer in improving all of my skills, 2D and 3D.

But before I get into that I’m going to discuss a few things, First of all “What are Universities for? “

Personally I think universities are for people who want to get a head start in life, in the career they want to pursue, or if they want a nice life. Of course people can go without universities and be fine, but these days it’s pretty hard to get a job in your desired industry without a qualification or degree of some sort. Even if you've had years of experience, in let’s say computer programming, or medicine, if you have a job in the industry already and want to leave the current company and get a job in another company, it’s really difficult without a degree, even if you do have all the experience you need.  So Universities are quite important these days, almost a necessity for some jobs. It’s a gateway to employability, success and self-development.

The university environment almost forces you to develop “soft skills” that you otherwise probably wouldn't develop if you just sat at home all day and did an online course. It enables you to get a new start, a new social life and loads of opportunities for anything and everything you can think of. It takes you out of your comfort zone and forces you to adapt to your environment, adapt to change.

What do I expect from my university education?
Well it’s my own responsibility to get the most out of my university education. It is independent education after all.

 I expect myself to change as a person and develop my technical and soft skills so I will be very employable by the end of my university journey, ready to start life. Apart from the technical aspects, I also want to make new friends and try different things out that I’ve never done before and really find out what kind of person I am.

Now about what I was previously talking about, Learning how to become a professional in my craft.
The past 2 years, I don’t really feel like I have developed enough knowledge or skills to really succeed in the industry and attract a job offer yet. So therefore I am dedicating my 4 month summer holiday to entirely doing intensive work and really tightening up my loose skills.

I will be attempting to create a mini-FMP, I stated what this was in my previous blog entry on documentation, So it’ll be concepting an entire game universe from scratch and then building every part of the level I need to so I can have a playable level at the end of the 4 months, or if it takes longer after Christmas. I’ll be creating vehicles, characters, weapons, props and a whole environment.

 It’s like Feng Zhu’s advanced diploma but including 3D as well:


It’s a huge project and something that will really challenge me but,

I think if I really try my hardest on this I will really boost my chances to get a job when I start searching for one, or maybe they might want to hire me by looking at my portfolio.  I want to become an advanced user of a Game engine, preferably CryEngine 3. I also want to become really good at visual design, I want to make up for my lack of ability and willpower for the past year and become an expert in 2D and 3D by building up an awesome portfolio.


So I will see how that goes and probably create a new blog for that whole project. 

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