End of Year 1 Review

Visual Design 


Looking back I think that my drawing ability has definitely come leaps and bounds before I started the course, mostly because I have never done a dedicated art course before, so ive found the focus on developing my artistic ability a great help in pushing myself forward. The initial structuring of working to develop sketches and work up to a final piece to cover a set amount of hours, has helped me in how I work so I can make the most of my time as well as concentrate on the areas I need to work on. I also think that working in lots of mediums, such as paints and inks has also made my mark-making a lot more confident in working outside of my comfort zone, as well as being extremely fun to do, working in these new mediums. An area of Visual Design that I have loved working on the most has been the anatomy studies, and life drawing, and this has definitely been an area ive worked a lot on outside of classes to improve my skills. 




Game Production


I think this is definitely one of the classes on the course I have definitely struggled to get into, though probably more through fault of my own, as I don’t particularly enjoy working in 3d and I think this has affected my drive to work hard at it. I think this is obvious because when I really push myself hard to work on the 3d projects I can actually work really efficiently and get a lot done in a short amount of time without rushing, as when I had to redo both my van and gladiator projects to up their standard I managed to complete both of them in the space of the few weeks during easter, as well as the weapon of choice project (which I completed in the space of 12 hours). I think its important that if I don’t enjoy something, it shouldn’t stop me from working hard on it as it will ultimately benefit me in the long run, and I think that I have definitely have learnt a lot in a short amount of time from never having used this project to creating fully textured and rigged characters within several months… I think that’s bloody impressive.




Contextual Studies


I think the one thing that has plagued me in contextual studies is leaving blogs until the last minute and not constantly updating them, which has made it harder for me to write about things weeks after we have covered them in lesson. I've slowly begun to get better at updating over the months whilst studying here, but there would still be times where id leave a post for a few weeks instead of doing it instantly. I just need to get into the habit of constantly blogging when I get ideas for projects or anything else that links to me studying here, as I think its important at bringing all my work done here together. 




I think overall my first year here studying game art has been quite a big one for me. A combination of things have made this year incredibly tough, and having to live away from home for the first time and deal with all these personal problems out of my comfort zone has not only impacted myself but the way I worked. I think its fair to say when I was at my worst I hardly had the motivation to work at all and that impacted badly on my coursework…something that looking back on was tough to deal with. Now im past all that ive done everything in my power to catch up, and get into a state of mind of determination to keep going forward, as being here is the only thing I want to do right now and I plan on making the best go of this opportunity and putting everything ive got and getting everything I can out of this course.