Reflecting on year one and ambition for year two

 

Thinking back over what I did last year reminds me of how much I could have achieved with the time I had. Even with these blogs I could have done so much more and put more effort in, but that never happened. I was lazy. I guess my determination wasn’t there when I needed it to be.

It wasn’t that I found the course hard at all. It was just me not doing the work on time, and leaving it all till the deadline. This led to me doing nearly half of my visual design finals on the last week of the deadline before the summative assessment, and although I didn’t manage to finish them all I got through in the end.

I have come a long way in terms of my 3D art compared to the start of last year. I feel like I had my head round 3D from the architecture project after Christmas last year. I still need to refine my texturing and unwrapping but I intend to achieve that this year. All that was bugging me was actually getting the work done on time.

For my 2^nd year at game art I really hope to improve my visual design skills, especially digital painting, which I have barely touched and since we had to do all of our work in our sketchbooks last year, and the fact that I didn’t improve like I was supposed to since I did most of the work and development in the last few weeks. Hopefully I don’t make that mistake this year well I will at least try not to.

 I’ve decided that I want to pursue a career as a 3D environment artist. This is because I like making lots of tiny assets and building up a nice environment or level, rather than focus on one extremely detailed character since I think I would get bored of spending so much time on one 3D model.

I also intend to learn and have some confidence/mastery over the program Z-Brush, which is a 3D sculpting software used to create efficient normal maps with high detail which then can be baked down onto a low poly model.

 This might prove to be a challenge since I’ve never used a program similar to it or sculpted anything before but that’s what internet tutorials are for and with the new 3D lecturers Mike and Max teaching us it will useful.

  Since this is the year that will count towards my final degree, I really need to put my full effort into everything I do, quality and quantity wise. I really want to get a first in my final degree and hopefully have a job lined up so I won’t have to be unemployed after doing 3 years of work.

I have been afraid of the job prospects, as a few of my 3^rd year friends, now ex graduates with firsts in their degree still haven’t managed to land a job, even though their Final Major Projects were absolutely stunning. 

In order to achieve what I want is very simple; But incredibly demanding and energy consuming for me in particular, someone who has a big procrastination problem.

-        Having a good timetable and managing my work.

-        Drawing every single day, at least 30mins of gesture drawing every night.

-        Eating well and exercising well. (Gives me more energy and motivation to do work)

-        Being on task with my 3D and 2D work. And actually work while I’m in the labs and not doze off or become distracted for long periods of time.

-        Producing at least 12 digital thumbnails and 12 sketchbook thumbnails for each visual design project.

-        Reading a book of any kind for at least 30mins or 1 hour every week.

-        Writing a blog every weekend.

If I can manage to keep this up for at least a month I would have crazy results in my development as an artist and a person. I will need an insane amount of discipline if I am to pull this off though.