Year 1 complete game over

Born Survivor

Fellow Bloggers,

My last semester has come to its eventual end. Despite the looming paranoia, growing stress and angst dreams, after a full night without sleep I final submitted my coursework. a lot of us were lost this year, yet seeing as I got this far I guess I survived ‘boot camp’.

At the start of the academic year, I consider myself a ‘failing student’. Here’s why, I had low self-esteem, my organization was atrocious and my skills as an artist were undeveloped. Basically in my first term on the course I had many ups and downs, mostly downs.

For starters, I had no game production experience whatsoever. In fact, my game production lecturer feared I would not make it through the first year, due to my first Christmas assessment. Despite my endeavours I had to re-do and re-submit much of my work both 2D and 3D, especially final sketches.

When I cast my mind back the first year was a challenge, both physically and mentally. The game art course pushes you to your limits, whether you like it or not you change as only the tough survive. This explains why the first year’s title-‘boot camp’ is most fitting.

It was after the Christmas holidays, to which I began to become serious about my work and my career. I learnt this not from my improving skill, but my resilient attitude to the coursework. I recall sketching until my fingers froze during the blind contour project, where we had to draw 144 sketches of people, interiors and cityscapes.

Even with these improvements in skill it was during my 3^rd term that my talents as an artist began to bloom. This can be seen in my conceptual designs and the quality of my 3D models had improved significantly. All examples can be seen in the recent blogs, prior to this.

On a personal level, my third term of university saw me growing in confidence and open-mindedness. I have been taking on more ambitious design projects, recently begun speed-painting and absorbing information on conceptual and character design from many various artists. Furthermore, I began my own personal studies of 3d projects and art work, which pushed my visual and game production skills to their limits. 

Although, to this day I still run into the momentary stress and chronic depression (being an artist), I am certainly a stone wall compared to the overly sensitive cry-baby who joined the course in September.

Now, I promised that I would not get to sentimental in this blog, but, I've come so far in my life and enjoyed every second of this course, the ups and downs, even the downs. This is why I find it hard to suppress the feelings.

I will forever remember the times I've had with my course mates, such as going to Bradgate Park, working till sill hours in the morning, freezing our butts of sketching in the freezing countryside of Leicester and of course partying with them.

I could go on all night upon these treasured memories without end, so to stop myself I will end it here. It has been a great year and I'm lucky that I have 2 more. I think all of my teachers and peers for supporting me, knowing full well that I can be a pain in the behind. Alas, I can sleep well knowing that I experienced the game art ‘boot camp’ and I survived it.