Friday 24 May 2013

End of Year 2 Review

It feels like it was yesterday I was writing my end of year 1 blog. God, these 2 years have gone quickly.

So what’s changed for me over the last year:

Generally throughout my first year I was being semi unproductive and just plain lazy at times regarding work. But now I have completely stopped that. Im glad I have too.

Changing this mindset was my main goal to accomplish this year, as I believe without the correct mindset and work ethic you will not get a job in this industry or anything like it. So making sure I changed it was vital, and it was done with a lot of focus, willpower and determination. It wasn’t a walk in the park mind you though, quite a few times (epically before Christmas) I slipped backed into my old habits of having 2/3 solid days of doing no work at all, I even stupidly had a week off from doing work to binge on the whole 7 series of Dexter (which I do highly recommend on another note).

I certainly felt the extra pressure of catching up on all that undone work though, not good.  But recently with the added bit of added pressure and motivation from the group project, my holiday and the end of the year 2. I was putting in roughly 55-60 hour weeks. I was mentally exhausted in the last few days but in a strange well it felt pretty good – knowing that ive just ploughed through a lot of work. That long stint of just doing nothing but work has just put it into perspective of how much I need to do to get a good grade, but It also how much and hard I can push myself. After that whole ordeal, its shown me how well I can cope with pressure as well, which is a great skillet to have in any intense job.

At the start of the year I felt my digital painting wasn’t up to scratch, especially after seeing the quality of work some other students are pumping out. It was, and still is something I want to improve on. In the second year visual design focuses much more on digital painting than the first year, so I had a lot of opportunities to practice. Improving in painting is just like drawing, the more you do it the better you get at it. Throughout the year I picked up better painting techniques from talking to other students and watching online tutorials and put these into practice. Below you can hopefully see an improvement. The first painting was from the start of the year, the second from the end of the year.

Abbey park Final


Moonshine Character Final

Ive always said in this blog that I have a passion for character art and I want to be a character artist. But with the recent completion of the group project I found working on environments and props to be a lovely experience. So much so that im changing my mind of what I want to specialise in on my FMP and what sort of job role I want to go into. It’s a bit late having this change of mind but with more job opportunities and less competition as a environment artist than a character artist and having this recent passion boost for environment art it might be the right decision. Ill use this summer to firmly decide on what I want to do.

Now that ive finished year 2 and have a long 5 month break ahead until year 3 starts, I have a lot of time on my hands. So apart from catching up on the big games ive missed out in the last 4 months or so, I want to do work. Drawing is still my weakest skill so I plan to do a lot of sketching so I don’t get rusty over the summer months. But im still looking to continue to carry on the group project with a few more members as we really want to win this competition. The exposure we are currently getting is great, so its something worth perusing. Especially so as it will massively help to get into the industry as having that on my portfolio will make me stand out from the rest of the crowd. It is also a chance to work on more environment pieces so I can get a better understanding on what path I want to take for my FMP.



Well I guess that’s it for another year, ill probably keep updating this blog over the summer, but not as much. See you in year 3.



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