Second Year Starts: How Did I Get Here?

Well... how did my first year go?

That's a very good question.

How will my second year go?

An even better question.

You're always taught to look back on what you've done. Whether it's at school, at university or at a job, you should always be looking back at mistakes, at victories, at everything; it's how you learn. So I suppose it's probably what I should do with my first year of Game Art.

In all honesty, my first year of Game Art was... okay. It wasn't terrible, but it wasn't great; average is the word I would use. I did my tasks, I completed my projects, I did presentations and that was that; and that's the problem. It was so average.

In the Games Industry, individuality is everything. You need to be able to stand out from the crowd to get a job. Who do you think a company is going to take on after a portfolio review? The girl who has some run-of-the-mill university projects or the girl who has spent time and effort on interesting side projects as well as having exciting new takes on her university-set work.

It's a no brainer.

Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself.

First of all, it's probably a good idea to look at what went right in my first year. Let's take a look.

First of all: LIFE DRAWING

Easily my favourite part of the year. Life drawing is one of the most calming, yet useful parts of this course. Taking some time out to examine anatomy in detail and work on shading and tone variations while gathering some great images and poses for reference later. I always put in 110% effort in life drawing. It's all about expression as well as accuracy so it didn't always have to be completely perfect.

I just really like life drawing.

Secondly: 3D PROJECTS

 When I came onto the course from Sixth Form, I had absolutely ZERO experience with any kind of 3D software. I'd come from a completely art based background and had no idea how I was going to get to grips with the 3D side of the course.

Turned out I really liked it.

First attempt modelling and texturing. What a joke...

Remodelled and textured in 5 hours in the second term. Looks INFINITELY BETTER.

First year introduced me to the core principles of 3D modelling and texturing and I think I picked up on it fairly quickly.

Picking a favourite 3D project from the first year is easy; the transit van project. It was so much fun. Previously we'd really only made things that were very straight, like buildings, bins etc. However, the transit van was a nice departure from this with a little more skill required to make a good model. It was a lot of fun and a real lesson in fixing n-gons. While the model took a while to make, I'm fairly confident that actually remaking it wouldn't take all that long; a day if that.

There were many other things in the first year that I enjoyed as well. The presentations we did for critical studies and the journalism that we looked in to really helped me come out of my shell and it turned out that I really enjoyed presenting, something that I would rather have killed myself than do a year or so ago.

If you want to read my Dragon Age: Origins review that I did for Critical Studies last year, check it out here.

However, not everything was a total success. My biggest problem in first year can be summed up in two words.

TIME.
MANAGEMENT.

It's something I've always struggled with. In school I did essay based subjects which I could always bash out in a night and hand them in the next day to get an A. Game Art is not like this and never will be. It's hard bloody work. It requires dedication and time, something that I really underestimated at first and it cost me.

So, after all this, what can I take away from it?

WORK HARDER. Seriously. That's my main goal this year. Just keep working and keep working hard. Practice makes perfect, as they say, so the more I do, the better I'll get. Right?

Well, I'll let you know how it goes...