What Is Art?

One thing that I need to stop, is asking questions as it annoys people, as I’ve found out on FaceBook. I’ve realised the only way to learn is to do things yourself on your own, hence why they just throw you in at the deep end and put immense pressure on you to begin with at University. I’m not complaining either, I just like to state things or ask when Google doesn’t have an answer, what’s wrong with that? I don’t think there’s really any right or wrong answer in Art, we all do things differently and I think that critique really is overrated, it proves nothing. The course tries to make us produce work that is more realistic and become better Artists but I think in actual fact that trying to be as realistic as possible is a battle that’ll never be won. It’s kind of like a competition really, who can do it ‘the best’?  The answer is no one can. When you look at modern gaming what do you see? Realistic looking games and games with cartoon looking graphics, who says we have to be realistic all the time? Millions of games out there are not realistic but does that make it wrong? A great successful game such as Super Mario should be put down because it is not realistic? Should Angry Birds be put down because its graphics are not realistic enough? It is bad because fat cartoon birds are flying through the air unrealistically? In that case is animation wrong? If so then are the people that made the game going to care? No, they would laugh because they have something that is making them millions of dollars of people downloading it and making money which is whole purpose of creating a game. I maybe criticising the course a little but I think maybe the course should be a bit more open to different styles and ways of doing things; this might be an Art course but one thing we have to remember that this is Art for gaming! It’s quite different to traditional Art, for example I remember earlier this year we was given an exercise to draw an image in a masters style and Pop Art was not allowed and I so wanted to ask why not? I it because Pop Art is cartoon like? With its bold colours, hard lines and think bold shapes? It is wrong because I do know of Artists that were inspired by the Japanese using black outlines in their work, are those great Artists wrong? I believe that Van Gogh himself had a slight Japanese influence. Does that make his work totally wrong? No it doesn’t. The point I’m trying to get across is that we all come from different walks of life, like everyone on the course, we all have our own ways of doing things and I think that it’s never wrong to try something new, I mean look at animation, if I brought anime to my interview I would have been rejected instantly, I mean it maybe better suited for a animation course but maybe a little wouldn’t hurt would it? It’s not really for me to say but that’s just what I think. I look at gaming and I think to myself billions of people around the world like gaming and appreciate it as it is, it’s just the same with animation, so I ask what’s so wrong about bringing something different into it? Or is it that thing were there’s only one route in education and if you don’t do what a school, college or University is looking for they reject you entirely and fail you? I’m just saying let’s be a bit more free and open about work, why not? You never know until you’ve tried, but I guess we all have different interpretations of Art.

http://www.arthistory.sbc.edu/artartists/artartists.html

No, no, no? Maybe a little... YES, YES, YES! 
(ish)

Again coming back to asking questions, right at the start of the first year one of our tutors explained that they want us to ask questions, ask why this and why that and how things work, but from what’s gone on during the year it’s not worth it, you just seem to get your head bitten off every time. Building upon a review of the year task we did, I’ve been thinking more about what maybe the course could do to improve. The first thing is that asking tutors a question is simply forbidden as it were, they don’t like it! I’ve attempted to ask questions but got nowhere asking tutors about things. Why be like that? It’s only a question. I’ve gotten better and I might add a more peaceful response out of asking others on the course however it’s come to be annoying now as I’ve explained. In the coming academic year I’ve decided to ask as few as questions as possible or rather none at all. This year we must start over again and learn a new program (unreal) which I know won’t be easy! Though I have vowed to do my best, doing my best will require me to work in a team this year, so not asking questions may corrupt things within the potential group I am put into, so maybe it’s a bit late for that? I’m just going to use my blog to rant on about things. 

Some things I’ve been thinking about the course is, upon not receiving calm comments from tutors, it would be nice if we were to have someone else there to help us out and give us feedback on things, someone who we could ask questions to and not get our heads bitten off. That way we could get more feedback as and when we like, if it’s through occasional meetings or sending work back and forth via e-mail. It would be good to get more feedback on 3D work as we only get it at the end of each term, the only source we have for that is FaceBook, but I personally don’t think that’s enough. I would like more practical help into how to do things as we only get shown once and for someone like me I like to see how something is done, as I don’t really learn from reading things, maybe that’s why I’m an Artist?

At the end of the first year we were shown what we get marked on for visual design and I just wish that we could have been shown this at the start of the year which would have helped more. One thing I like about visual design however is that we get an extra chance on a Friday to do more life drawing, I would like to get more help on life drawing but it is that I’m just too afraid to ask now and I actually daren’t ask! I have got the occasional help from Jack but again one person to about 40 students is difficult, though I’m guessing that 40 is about half that now. I remember an Artist (can’t remember his name) saying that every Artist has thousands of naff drawings inside them and I think that is definitely true, sometimes you’re happy with things but sometimes you are not, on the course I’ve seen a lot of people not happy with things a bit too often even though I think their work looks very good and asks me the question of ‘how did they do it?’. I think confidence is key, I mean you’re (as a human) never going to be happy with everything you do, as that would be unreal, life throws good and bad things at you else if it as all good it would be boring, and all bad things wouldn’t be nice. I think confidence in your own ability is key, especially from now on, you can’t go into an interview with no confidence else you’d never find a job, you have to take it on the chin really and remember whatever you don’t think is good is probably good to someone else. You sort of have to stand back from your work and say what’s good and bad about it and try to right the wrong next time around. What I’m trying to say is that this year confidence is important especially when working in groups. I can talk about it as much as I want but it won’t change what happens out there, only thing I need to do is sit down and shut and just do it as the slogan for Nike goes.

Return For 11/12

And so I've made it through to year two. As today I passed my re-sit and made it back onto the course. But there’s no time to celebrate, I’ve been pondering about the outcome of my re-sit for months, at first I was worried that I’d even get the chance to re-sit and then once I got that I was worried that I’d passed the re-sit. I must get back to work, I’ll make sure that this year it doesn’t come down to re-sitting and actually make sure that I find enough time to complete my work so I’m not rushing about at last minute, not only handing it in late but forgetting one of the projects!

All that said, I’ve done enough to keep on the course, a course that was described as boot camp on the first week. Well I’m glad to say I survived the first year of boot camp and that this year it’s time to work 10 times as hard. I preferably would like to do 4 times the amount of work in all areas of the course at a minimum standard as I doubt they’d be anytime to 10 times.

I think on areas of the course specifically, I would like to get better at modelling first of all. I mean modelling hasn’t exactly come easy to me in the past year, as I’ve said I have not had much practise with a 3D piece of software before, however I’m getting a better hang of it. I will definitely do some personal work on top of everything else this year. One thing about game production this year is the team projects, very looking forward to it but worried some things will be stressful and fallings out can and probably will happen, but I can only give it my best. I think it’ll be fun though as it really excited me that we get to actually build a game level by working in teams when I first found out about that. It’ll be interesting to see how it turns out and I guess it’s good for developing an understanding of working in teams regularly which on any game is important as all games all made by group of people working together as you know. Communication will be important, and I think it’ll really put us all to the test. In which I think will help with our final major projects to happen in the third year as it’s allowing us to work on a bigger scale, or project altogether which is what is done in the final year from what I’ve seen.

In visual design, this year again it’s all about personal work I need to do a lot more personal work, tons in fact. The only personal work I did in my first year was some fruit and painting the back of my hand, which isn’t obviously good. Though I still passed visual design without having to re-sit, I need to do a lot more work. I’m thinking that drawing a piece of fruit once per-week as suggested earlier this year will help, I got into drawing fruit but I only found the time to do 4 pieces rather than about 10 which I was aiming for. I don’t this year want to get told that I have to re-do all my work again, like at Christmas and again at Easter! I really don’t want to have to do work again so I think putting more time into doing the personal work will pay off in the long run alongside the mandatory work to. I think that more fruit, more still life objects and some figure drawing every now and then will help; I really need a better understanding of the human form, and so researching into more things like that will help to. I mean if I had to choose from character or environment Artist it’d be environment every time for me, so I think that learning more about the figure etc as it can also help with people in relation to the environment they are in and spacial relations etc. I like to draw a lot of things in perspective, so I’ll probably do a lot of one and two point perspective and I think I’ll try and go for a 3 point to since that’s something I’ve wanted to try. I want to get better at painting still not just traditional but digital, I think I want go more in the digital direction however, especially for concept work.

Like I’ve said I don’t want to have to re-do things this year and I certainly don’t want to go through another re-sit, this year’s work is important as it counts towards the final degree so I need not say more about that. On the blog side of the course I did well to get 55 out of the 30 required credits in which this year I am to try and double that amount which will of course count on me researching a lot more like I’ve said. When I’ve finished a piece of work I’ll probably post it and talk about it though I’m not sure what more I could say about fruit etc. However talking more about my experiences on the course, the trips out and around Leicester, my visual design and game production work, keeping a written diary of our team building projects will be good. Obviously getting more links and images in there will be good, but I got to make sure about everything I do, I do it with 100 percent effort as a minimum. It's odd, because last year when the course had just started I was doing well, I got good feedback from my first term, I got told to just do more, so I started doing more and then I my work sort of lost quality to it, I need to balance the quantity and quality thing out. On my first blog I written I said how I was rock bottom of the group in terms of how good I am as an Artist, a year later I still am rock bottom, so I need to get into high gear and really push for it this year. Lots of people I’ve spoken to say the second year of University is easier because they don’t make it as hard for you however the work gets pilled on a bit. It’s not going to be easier than last year in which is the simple case for working harder. Above all I’m looking forward to going back.