Reflection on year one, ambition for year two

I leant a lot in my first year and i am going to carry through what i learnt and improve on it more during the second year.

 

In visual design I learnt that I needed to use soft pencils more to improve my tone and shading because my drawings lacked depth due to not having enough range between my light and dark tones.

 

In game production I learnt I so much last year that to list it would warrant an entire blog entry on its own, this is due to the fact I had never really used any 3d software at all before staring the course. Although I know I still have loads to learn in 3ds max I know that no one will ever truly master everything in the whole programme as this would be pointless, but learning  to use all the features that will help you achieve what you want is the key, in my case learning all the thing that will help when it comes to modelling for games.

 

In critical studies I learnt a lot by looking a range of elements that are present in games, from art direction to environment design and even just the history of games itself. Although the lecturer might think he only gets to teach us the “boring bits” he makes it interesting and I found the lectures were very motivational and I always left with a positive mindset about the subject discussed and in general.

 

 

In the second year I hope to improve on the basic skills I learnt last year whilst acquiring new and more advanced skills as the year progresses (mainly in 3d). My drawing still requires a bit of practice as I am not that quick and good at drawing as I would like to be so this year I want to practice drawing more so I become quicker and better so I can get things like ideas and concepts down faster but also detailed pieces looking good as well. This year in visual design we are starting to use colour more and also a medium which is fairly new to me, digital painting.

 

This year I need to improve my planning as next year it will be a key element as the final major project will require clear and concise planning to ensure I achieve what I set out to do in my fmp. I can use my time during the second year to hone my planning skills so that when it comes to the 3^rd year I wont need to worry, this also goes to the same for concepts.

 

I aspire to model either characters or assets (vehicles,weapons etc) I have realised after the first year that the human body and other organic shapes are probably the hardest things to model realistically as generally things with complex curved surfaces are challenging.