Reflections

Wow, that year went fast. It feels like the course only started a few weeks ago, but here I am, a year later and still making progress towards my goal of being a game artist. Its amazing taking the time and thinking back to what has happened since being at university and realising how much you have done, the places you have visited, how much you have learnt and having a different attitude towards life in general.

I remember in the first weeks of the course, sitting behind a couple of second years doing the treasure chest in 3ds Max completely confused at what they are doing while having a blank open max file in front of me. When now, I could build a chest in my sleep, texturing is a different matter, I need to focus on improving that, which is one of my goals for the second year, keep redoing texturing sheets until I feel happy with the end result.

Remembering back to the first year, I had a really good time on the course, and I am happy with the results I got and how everything went, in lessons and the different teaching methods of the tutors.

I have a couple of regrets which I should of done during the first year, like not learning how to digital paint. I had a few attempts to learn, but I wish I would have stuck with doing a few quick pieces a week and build up my knowledge and confidence using it. A big regret of mine is spending too much time playing games and not doing work. A good thing this year, my internet is soooo rubbish that I am not able to play any online games, which I get addicted to so easily, so that’s one less thing I get to blame on not doing work. Another is not using the courses Facebook and doing my blogs. It’s there for people to help me, get and give crits on work, to socialise with people in the different years and get inspiration from other people, to write down my ideas and thoughts about things, but I never remember to log in and go through things, or remember to write stuff down in blogs, I keep it all in my head, which is bad because after a few days I probably forget it. I still need to make a big sign to put behind my monitor ‘REMEMBER FB + BLOGS!!!!’ and give myself a gold star every time I do it; I’ll get it done then. (It’s funny looking back at my last blog post, and realising I said the same thing)

One of my main ambitions for the second year is to practice traditional and digital painting and get confident enough to start producing finals in them, instead of using pencil all the time. To improve the quality of hand drawn textures for 3D work. To start using my blog more, start writing down my thoughts on about the films I see on Wednesdays afternoon, and start including my own personal stuff from time to time.

Also to become a better artist, take more of an interest in other peoples work and not just my own, get books out the library instead of just using the internet, everything I should be doing already. It’s time to pull my socks up and do the best I can while I’m here, because I won’t get this chance again, and hopefully make it to the third year!