Y2 S1 T14 - Elements Of Game Design, Part Five: Planning And Concepting

Having read through the Merekat PDF about planning concepting, I’m quite literally scared about industry, I’m also starting to ask myself what made me want to do Game Art as an academic subject.

The thing is the PDF was really interesting and showed the thought process of what happens when trying to create a concept, but what I didn’t like was the way it was criticised so much. It took 35 hours, which was stated that it usually takes about 40-70 hours typically, so you have to bare with that, and a lot of thought went each specific part of the overall image for example looking textures, the human form, the birds, clothing folds etc and just overall what the artist wanted to convey, but in the end it just was just mediocre... I mean that to me is really harsh, 35 hours is quite a long time on a piece of Art work, it wasn’t quite the standard amount of time as explained but I personally think that saying is wasn’t that good was being out of order... I could only dream of producing a piece of Art like that, I know I’m light years from that at the moment, but even when one day if I do produce a piece of Art like that it’s not even going to be considered as good, in which case all the work I’ve ever done must be total shit.

I didn’t read the entire whole thing, I cut a few chunks out but, it was good reading about how this one particular person showed their progression of how they come up with a final image and the research they put in, it really helped me a lot as now I’ve got a whole new perspective on how to go about coming up with ideas which I wish I knew about in the first year of the course to be honest. It showed how when you’ve got an idea you can research and find images related and suitable to use in what you have in mind for the final outcome and then be able to use that as reference when planning and actually putting your plans into action. I thought that is showed it really well but I’m just disappointed at some of the comments made, for example this ‘Merekat’ person stating that is basically good and a nice try but next time I expect to see better...

We’ve talked about planning and managing time this week, obviously in industry you will have deadlines to work towards so it’s important to keep on top. I heard one person say this week that one person maybe really good at drawing and get things done quickly but another may not be as good but spend more time on a piece of work in which is where it’s making up for it. I’m personally taking more care with my work and trying to produce more, I want to get faster at producing quality work but the only way that’ll happen is if I practise more. Some people will not bother with thinking about things like correct perspective, depth, texturing etc and just get on and do it quickly and it might look good but not totally correct when you go into detail, where as me I’m trying to plan out and put more quality into my work now which is helping, though I may not be good at rendering things correctly I’m putting in the effort to make things look how they should be shown through planning. I think going back to the basics is always an essential part of any drawing, getting off topic and trying things that don’t seem to work is never going to get you anywhere. It’s like what I talked about last week about how if you go straight into painting an image with no drawing which is the essential part of planning it’s more than likely going to look shit. We got told this week that it doesn’t matter whether you are good or not and that we all seem to think that Art is down to talent and you have to just be born with it to be good, which is not true, you could take anyone who is total rubbish and turn them into an amazing Artist within a few years. It’s amazing to see how much I personally have improved in the past year.

Coming back to the document I read though I, I liked the techniques they used in developing their image. I like how they said it helps to overlay a 50% grey layer in Photoshop to help pick out the areas that are darker. Some parts of it were quite long and I didn’t understand what was being said, it did get a bit tedious with it being 40 pages long, another thing was that it said research into things does pay off in the long run. It was only last week we looked at how when we look at how we only see light bouncing off things that makes us see whatever it maybe and like how in this document they this person has done their research into materials obviously and looked at how the light would bounce off the things like the clothes and snow and how the lighting in the image would be effected by this which is very in detail I have to say. They went on to explain how knowing all this pays off so I guess researching is something I need to do more off when wanting to create an image in future, it’s a lot of stuff to take in for everything you want to do but I guess once you know these things there’s nothing you can’t do, it is how we talked about driving this week, it is a lot to take in at first but the day comes when it all pretty clicks in and it comes natural, it’s just a case of learning, no matter how long and hard it’s going to be...

To sum up it’s all been about planning this week again, I feel like I’ve started to do more but I need to not do too much. I have never played Uncharted however I stumbled across this video when searching planning and concepting:

One thing I like about this is how in the interview, one of the guys who works for Naughty Dog said that it’s great to work with people they can trust, who are top of what they are asked to do and do great work even f they have very minimal direction and goes onto explain that they are kind of spoilt in that way because they are getting the job done even if they are not the best, which obviously means that they are putting in the effort of planning etc and getting the final outcome they hope to achieve. He goes onto explain how it’s a bit chaotic but they all get along together which as we know is key as games are made by not just one person and communication as I’ve said before is important. He says that when you’ve got a modeller working with a texture Artist they are communicating all day, which is good because also can bring a about new ideas that way even if you don’t implement them in the game it’s their to put forward for next time. The people in the company enjoy their work and are able to come up with ideas, which is more of the kind of environment I would love to work in because it allows you to get your ideas across more and be heard. They say how they gave everyone three months to come up with ideas and a lot of those ideas in that time made it in the final game. I like the way he says being creative without restriction.

I remember last year when I was planning and concepting for my character projects. I created a lot of ideas just using a simple method of creating the same shape body form I was going for and creating different designs looking at sea life as it were a reef character project. Thing was I did the exact same for the interesting character project, I took one pose I liked and experimented with it, I don’t know if that is the actual professional way to go about it but I saw it that way, went for it and followed it through to the final model.

Ideas.

Concept.

Final Model.

Now I take my time with my work and be more careful about making decisions, I’ve gotten into the habit of digitally painting thing a lot more, I layer over colours in pretty much everything I do now, to bring out more colours just like the in document of the woman in the snow, separating things layer by layer I think is the best way to plan and concept were as putting everything on one layer can be quite tricky as I have found out in the past.

Links:

http://www.ehow.com/how_4889041_make-concept-art.html

http://www.gamecareerguide.com/features/455/becoming_a_game_concept_.php

www.ConceptArt.org

Pac-Man

Pac-Man is just quite simply put: a classic. I love it and so do millions across the world. It’s been out for over a good 30 years now and it still never goes out of date or gets to boring. It’s very simplistic but addictive game design, just like many of the classics such as Space Invaders or Pong to name a couple of others. Recently I’ve been playing the new championship edition, it’s still same old Pac-Man and ghosts trying to chase you but has little differences that make it just as, if not better than the original 1980 game.

Pac-Man 1980

First of all the game has 6 different game modes, championship mode, two different challenge modes and two different extra modes as well. In Championship edition you are given five minutes to gain the highest possible score you can, just the same as extra mode 1 to. The different in this game however is that the screen is split into two sections (for every game mode that is) and that you must work yourself (or Pac-Man) through the maze eating the dots, once dots are cleared on one half of the screen a fruit will appear on the opposing side in which you need to reach and eat to make more dots appear on the side you just cleared (if that makes sense). Each time you clear one side and you eat the fruit not only will more dots appear but the maze changes as well adding more challenge to the game. It’s very cleaver and challenges the user by making it more complex than the standard maze used back in 1980, so even the experts at the original game will be put to the test especially with a time limit now set. Championship edition of Pac-Man is essentially the ultimate game for Pac-Man players around the globe to compete to see who the best is because in the original 1980 version there is a way to basically cheat which proves nothing. The cheat is in which taking a certain route every time around the maze to complete it without fail (sounds like someone with way too much time on their hands must of found this by analyzing the coding of the ghosts and the routes they take if you ask me).  When they made Miss Pac-Man however they changed the layout of the mazes sort of causing people to work out a totally different strategy, Miss Pac-Man is just the same as Pac-Man except they made more maze layouts.

MS. Pac-Man 1981

I think the highest ever score on the original game I got was over 50,000 which is a good score since most people I know struggle getting 10,000. When I play Pac-Man however, my main focus is eating the ghosts. The power pellets as they are called are placed in 4 corners of the maze which is good game design since you can get caught or trapped easier in the corners. I basically try to wait and round up the ghosts in a corner, (which is a tip I saw on a video once) in which when they come close to you, you can eat the pellet quickly and they are no trouble trying to catch. The power pellets slow them down to but as the game progresses the speed of the ghosts gets higher and higher and if you make it high enough (most preferably through cheating) it gets to the point where the power pellets don’t even do anything because the speed of the game is going so fast.

Pac-Man Championship Edition 2007

If you were to make it to the 256^th level of the original game there is a coding error making this level essentially the last in the game as it is pretty much unplayable?

Coming back to the ghosts however, the creator of Pac-Man Toru Iwatani said in an interview that he coded each ghost in its own specific unique way, basically the red ghost (“Blinky”) trys to chase Pac-Man normally where as the pink and blue ghosts (“Pinky and Inky”) try to position themselves in front of Pac-Man’s mouth, and then there’s the orange ghost, (random one) being Clyde, you can tell it’s random because it’s name doesn’t fit with the rest, is basically programmed to go in random directions, though looking closer at the game’s code reveals it does chase Pac-Man most of the time but interestingly moves towards and hangs around at the bottom left of the maze when Pac-Man is facing a certain direction. What’s good about the ghosts is how they are programmed differently to give the game a more interesting style of game play rather than the game being programmed to chase Pac-Man all the same way else it would be boring. It’s basically the coding what games this game what it is, it sort of asks the question what is more important graphics or coding, in my opinion they are both as important as each other, coding is needed to make a game work in a certain way however coding is useless if there’s nothing to work with, which is where the Art to gaming comes in.

Back in those days however, in the late 1970’s when Pac-Man will have been in development there was none of the equipment that we have today, it was all basically coding to make the game do something and the Art was extremely simple. They would have had to work 8 bit graphics and not having to produce much in game Art as you do in today’s world. Back in them days the programming would have been heavily relied on I’d imagine making a game work, and not that many people working on a game, especially Artists.

I remember not so long ago in my blog talking about how I think we should revive old titles on new consoles, there’s so much potential I think and the next generation is ages away so why not to fill up the time? I personally could go on forever about how you could improve some of the old games, and I think that Pac-Man championship edition is a prime example of this. They’ve taken (at the time) what was almost a 30 year old game and turned it into something new, still being the same old Pac-Man but sort in a new age if that makes sense. What I mean is better looking graphics, new ways to play the same game and different style of controlling the game as they now have added these little extras in. This type of game would sell well with people that have been playing Pac-Man for years and still love it, it’s kind of like the Mario series, it’s still going today and they have the same style of game play as they did back in 1985 but adding different things into it in the new modern age we live in now. The new graphics, the new controllers, new interfaces, it’s pretty much the same thing from 1985 but now in today’s world we have the opportunity to take that and make what it was back then better with the technology that we have now as its advanced. I like to sort of call it the games that never were, or could have been back in the past, taking an original game but sort of updating it, putting the retro classics that everyone seemed to love so much back in the 1980’s when gaming was at it’s peak into the new age of today.

I think now a day’s more people put more emphasis on graphics in games and the way it looks seems to be the most important thing. It is important to have an Art direction, but at the end of the day all areas of game development are important because they all make up the game.

Year 2 - Week 1 - October 3rd - 7th

Since coming back to University, I’ve quite enjoyed it. Its fun coming back and seeing everyone and getting back into a routine again but at the same time it’s not all fun and games. Visual design this week showed and taught us more about what Art is and the processes of it. It’s really complicated, first of all, everything is upside down, our eyes just reverse it, it’s a complicated process, we all take for granted what our eyes allows us to do (see things) but the thing is in education Art is seen a lot lower down on the list. The reason for this is that I think a lot of people don’t see it as something big or important, but in actual fact it is extremely important, without Art and Design there would simply be nothing, because nothing would have design, even we as human beings have a design to our bodies. Let’s face it, without being able to draw and plan things it would be quite difficult to say make a house without planning. It’s like what I was talking about in my hopes for this year, if you don’t plan a drawing and go straight into painting it from scratch you probably find it really difficult unless you’re some sort of Art wizard? People don’t appreciated Art as much as other academic subjects, but let’s just how the world would cope without houses or building, electricity, gas or food. I mean even food has design, something needs to be made to hold and store energy that we all need, else we wouldn’t survive and not have anything we have today. I might be getting too much into this but if the lord gave us problems, design is one of the best ways to solve these problems because we make things that help us solve them. What we’re doing is complicated, the receptors in our eyes are taking light that’s there in front of us turning it back around in which we are able to apply that to paper etc using different media.

Don't believe everything you read on Wikipedia but Art on many sites I've seen is described as a mode of expression though all kinds of things such as music, film, photography and literature etc, basically all the things we take for granted cause everyone has something they like and whatever it maybe is a way of expression. For example everyone has their own taste in music pretty much but would you call the music wrong? I don't you would since you take a liking to it, no matter what kind of form of music it maybe. What I'm trying to say is Art can be pretty much anything, and pretty much anything has some sort of expression or emotional impact on you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art

http://arthistory.about.com/cs/reference/f/what_is_art.htm

http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/picasso/500/Meaningofart.html

(They all pretty much say the same thing)

This week we was shown about how Artists like Claude Monet were obsessed with colour yet let it be known Monet couldn’t see colour we all normally do and eventually found out that the colour in all of his works were wrong, but the fact is this did not ruin his work at all, his works were still great pieces of imagery, the thing is it showed what these real life scenes looked like to him through his vision. It’s interesting because the colours are different, and the thing is we all see things differently so it doesn’t make it wrong, it makes it unique if anything. This year we are going to have a much more creative year I think and we too are going to be obsessed with colour, I have studied colour theory in the past too but pretty much picked up the basics of it, for example different colours have different meanings towards us all, for instance yellow could mean joy and happiness and the colour of the sun, red could be danger and violence, green neutral, blue calm and beauty and pink love etc. A lot of Artists explored different colour, I think Picasso and Monet are particularly good examples, they used many different colours throughout their works exploring the brighter and darker colours. Some Artists express their feelings and emotions through the use of colour for example using darker colours such as blue and blacks when they were feeling down and depressed, but used brighter colours such as reds and pinks when they were in love which is interesting as Art obviously can be used as a way to express you.

I think that paintings like these are good examples of expressing emotion and feelings:

Claude Monet - Poppy Field

(Happy and joyful with brighter colour)

Picasso - Les Noces De Pierrette

(Sad, darker & colder)

This week we went to Abbey Park for the day, it (in total honesty) got kind of boring after a short while. We’d been to the same place back in April on a bright sunny day to so it really was just looking at the same thing, the only thing different was that it was a different time of year so the colours of the leaves and trees were slightly different. I’ve written how I’d like to go further out to different places or just other places in general around Leicester. It’s was really just a repeat of the last trip but this time trying to find a different scene to draw. Me personally, I like to draw the buildings (though there aren’t that many) and structures around the place rather than the trees. Tree foliage is something I’m dreadful at and will avoid at all costs, though in my sketches they are always lurking in the background no matter how hard I try to find a non green area around there. In my final I wanted to try and take all the things we talked about in our lecture, basically looking at the rule of thirds trying to bring the eyes back around the painting by placing the main focus point to one side. I found a small building there which this worked quite well with and I was able to make use of proper perspective. I also used a colour swab to create the image using just 3 colours being green, an orange like colour, yellow and of course black and white. I’ve wanted to try creating an image using this method before but I can say it’s amazing what you can achieve using just a few colours (though I didn’t struggle to make a blue colour out of it). I layered the colours over in my final digital painting but and I gave it my best shot on trying to create the trees and bushes. I used some different customized brushes to help create the effect, which I think went okay in the end.

In game production, we’ve been given 3 different projects to do, first being a professional brief from Blitz studios to do a treasure chest, the second a trash project and the third being a self portrait in which I am dreading. I hate photo’s being taken of me let alone drawing myself or even people drawing me. I’ve already finished the modelling for the project, so all that’s left to do is the texturing although this time the texturing comes with a twist, being paint it yourself, which is quite fun because this allows us to be expressive in our work creating different patterns etc to place on the model, the style will of course be the same cause we all have our own ways of painting. It’s allowing us to use more advanced techniques in which we make and apply texture, because we are pretty much free to do what we want on that as long as it resembles a treasure chest. Getting us use to professional briefs is good to as last year we were told to pretty much model this and that and get it done, were as this year it’s a bit more open and free and not strictly limited! This year we have been told that when we model, we must think about the shape and form of everything, make sure that every polygon or triangle has a purpose and is doing something, as last year I can admit that I had a lot of useless polygons everywhere doing nothing, good mesh flow is essential!

 1986 triangles.

That’s about all for this week; one last thing is obviously critical studies. First and foremost I was disappointed and quite annoyed to hear that I was one of the ones that fluffed the first year but they are going to give me another chance. I can’t complain because I’ve got the chance to put what went wrong last year, right this year. I’ve been worried all summer long about making it back and I’m here now so I guess I’ll just shut up. Anyway we were basically introduced to what goes on in the second year and how this year we are taking a massive leap forward towards becoming Game Artists. We are not Game Artists yet, but we will be once we hit the end of the year so we are told. Looking back at last year’s groups projects, there is a lot of work involved producing a good game level asset, I’m expecting for all of us to be told what we are doing is boring and to add more stuff into our projects, I remember being told that adding extra tiny features into the asset makes a game more fun and the user will enjoy it more. I can relate to that, in fact all of us could relate to that in all the game we have played, but before that I think the main purpose is to get the mandatory parts finished first then add the extras. It’s kind of weird put in all areas this week, its all come down to planning. Planning has sort of been the theme of this week, the best work is produced when the planning is perfected I believe.

Gaming On Different Platforms

One thing I’d like to talk about is how gaming changes between the consoles it is played on. For example when building a game on one console will obviously be different on the other, because it will run differently to suit the needs of the technology used on various machines. Take an all format game such as the new FIFA 12 game just released. The game is available on all consoles, ranging from Xbox 360, PS3, Nintendo Wii, PSP, Nintendo DS, PC, Mobile, so right there is pretty much everything.  What I think is quite interesting is how they different from each other. The Xbox 360 and PS3 versions will be similar, they both use online capabilities similar to each other and they both use an achievement system were by the user is rewarded point for completing different objectives within the games, they both use standard wireless controllers to control what happens in game and the game modes will be the same, they both have HD graphics on top of all that to so they are much similar. Now take the Nintendo Wii version, much  different, for starters the game uses a totally different controller system in which were the user can move the controllers around to control what happens on screen using the sensor bars that are used in conjunction with the controller, the graphics cannot be in HD, the game modes will be different. What is different about this version is that they take all the things the Wii can do that the other versions can’t and use it to their advantage. For example they have extra game modes that allow the user to play more different activities with the different controller system. The PC version will be possibly be similar to the Xbox and PlayStation versions however, the thing with the PC is that the controllers can be different as not everyone will want to play with a mouse and keyboard, the graphics can vary as different PC’s have different graphics cards and there are different versions of operating systems that games can and cannot work on.

FIFA 12 in HD

If we were to take a look at the Nintendo DS, PSP or mobile versions they will be extremely different. First thing about these is that they are obviously on a smaller console, as these do not (and like the PC version) do not need to be connected to a TV to display and run properly as intended. They are essentially on a smaller system, with again their own capabilities such and own way of displaying the screen with all its interfaces. These consoles will be limited with them being smaller and not as capable of holding the kind of technology found in the larger consoles. They still could have all the same game modes etc, online play and with Wi-Fi enabled be able to play against friends, but you can expect the graphics to be of lower quality and most often than not the game modes will be different where there won’t have as many features then a full console version of the game. You often find now-a-days mobile versions like on an iPhone for example have lite/mini versions of the game which are a sort of shortened down version of the full game but made that way so they are compatible with the hardware it is to be used on, this way you can still play your favourite games on the go, which is quite clever.

FIFA 12 Nintendo 3DS

I remember back to my earlier days of gaming when I use to have a GameCube, the thing with the GameCube was that it was compatible with similar games that could be used on the GameBoyAdvance console. You could connect a wire from the console to the GameBoy and connect them together to interact; you could even use the GameBoy as an extra controller that way which is very clever. I remember back in these days Pokemon was a massive thing and that you could connect the GameBoy games to your GameCube using a connecting cable and transfer your Pokemon back and forth between, something was quite similar with the Sonic the Hedgehog series to if I remember and you could play extra games only available through this connectivity.

Now-a-days you can now do the same thing using a PSP to a PlayStation 3 and an Nintendo DS to an Nintendo Wii, of course as technology has advanced it’s all done through wireless connections, its clever and effect, and as I think I’ve said before it’s an added boost to marketing games as some options and modes within games are only available through doing things like this.

Y2 S1 T13 - Reflection On Year One, And Ambition For Year Two

Now, I’ve already pretty much rambled on about what I’m going to do for year two but now that we’re back, settled in and been told a few more things about what this year is about then this is a good way to reflect back on what I said previously and perhaps change things.

In the first year, it was a good year if I had to submit it up in one word however it was a bit of a scramble. In my first post I think I had said that no one in my family has been to University previously and for me to go having no knowledge of what it’s like it was extremely scary especially when you’re on your own living away from home. I was panicking about anything and everything quite literally, worrying about this that and the other all year long, asking questions constantly in case I’d get anything wrong etc. The point is I’m a worry head and worried too much and it barely got me through, I can’t go down that same route again obviously. I was literally a split centimetre from being kicked off. My hopes for this year include doing more work obviously, more personal work and self directed studies.

Over summer I’ve had to re-sit and had to do a 3D project, which was good because it got me back into modelling and texturing etc think I was enjoying my time off too much. Hopes for 3D this year is for me to develop more understanding of 3D skills, especially in texturing for 3D work as that is something I still hate, I’m more use to unwrapping now which is good I need to get out of the habit of making tillable textures and just mapping them on. I hope to do more self directed/personal projects in 3D this year; I have a few things in mind. I want to get use to adding more bump maps and specula maps to all my projects as it gives them more of a realistic feel as I guess it’s required for everything now. The problem with my projects last year was that they was too (how do I say?) flat, and could of been improved a lot more. I would like to try and understand lighting a bit more in 3D and more about rendering. Obviously getting use to using Unreal will be required at some point but that will come in time, I just want to focus on improving my 3D work for now. Found an interesting website that can help in visual design and 3D areas of the course actually.

www.thegnomonworkshop.com

The group project is coming up ever so shortly so I need to be producing my best to contribute to the team I’m thrown into, which won’t be an easy challenge.

MORE DEPTH!

For visual design, there’s a lot more emphasis on colour this year, but I have already done some colour work before which helps because painting things has never been my strong suit, but since coming to university learning to layer over colours to bring out a mixture of different colours has helped me greatly. My painting in recent years however has improved a lot more for me so to expand on that will be good. One thing is that I want to do a lot more still life studies, a piece of fruit each week is what I’m hoping to achieve so about 40 pieces by the end of the year will be quite nice, I’m going more down the digital route with my drawings this year though. Though I think practising some traditional will be good now and then. Looking at different styles of painting will help and master Artists will help bring out a better quality in my work. Looking online at the work of Van Gogh it even states that before you can become good at colour painting you must first become good at drawing, well personally I think with the skills I’ve built up in the first year I am now good at drawing I just need to become good at painting. One thing that it says that is interesting is that Van Gogh said much drawing and little colour is the right way to work, more colour and less drawing is wrong, well it’s obviously true else you’d have no planning for your work and end up with a mess of colour? Pretty sure I’ve gone wrong like that in the past when I smaller of course, but the point is I’ve pretty much mastered perspective now and need to expand painting a lot more, because up until last year pencil was the only thing I ever dared to use.

http://www.vangoghgallery.com/painting/

Drawing the human figure is something else I want to get better at, planning is essential...

As far as blogs go, again it’s just more personal work, writing about things I want to talk about, the movies we watch, visual design, game production, and I’m going to attempt to keep a diary of each week as it goes by. The thing is I need to do more research, and post more links and images. I’ve got a few things In mind that I want to talk about and I think it may even help if I write down the things I want to talk about so I remember and can do so later. I did really good in my critical studies last year, it’s where I shined most though I have the feeling this is where a lot people shined most. Last year I got 40/40 for game production and visual design and in critical studies 55/30 so obviously done something right in this area. For a first class degree I will need 70+ on each so basically it’s all about doing double the amount of work in each area basically, except in critical studies I need 15 more points which I am easily capable of achieving.

This year it’s all about doing more as we were told at the end of last year you know what you’ve got to do and it’s just a case of doing it for 2 more years.

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.