Personal review of the first year

Okay, so it’s the end of my first year!... well almost. There’s still the whole ‘get into second year’ part but as far as teaching and assignments are concerned, it has finished, and I’m still alive, which is always good. I learned so much this year I think its best I pick a few things which are most important to me. Having a weekly deadline, every week for both semesters is very difficult to keep up with, because at any point if you become lazy or distracted you find yourself with much more weight on your shoulders and this leads to rushed work. I learnt this the hard way and even towards the end of the year I found myself with too much work and too little time. Now that it’s all over I am thankful that it’s like this from the first year because it forces us to be consistent early on, a very important value for any artist in the games industry.

I think as far as art skills go, I have developed quite a bit and drawing assignments every week is the reason. Whether we like it or not were going to a different location or a brief is being passed to us every Tuesday for us to decipher in our own way. Also Critical Studies every Wednesday are definitely what I enjoy, (not just because it’s an hour lecture where you just sit, watch and listen...aha) but most of Mike’s talks are motivational.  We get given glimpses of the industry in all of them so every week were reminded what were aiming for and where were going. I think the course structure is very solid, no flaws on the timetable and teaching hours because I think there’s only so much someone can teach you 1 on 1 before you HAVE to go away and do something yourself thus learning to make your own decisions. The tutors also always seem to be available in their offices or can be contacted through email so it’s never a case where they set work and disappear for the rest of the week.  

Considering work ethic I have realised that when you get into the games industry as any kind of artist 2d or 3d there becomes no such thing as free time. If you have finished one assignment, another is waiting or right round the corner and this is where I self reflect most due to my notorious ways of leaving work last minute. I think this was my last time doing this and of course like most procrastinating students I have said this before. But it seems that I been leaving things late so long even before this degree that I’m genuinely getting bored of doing all nighters and pumping out work I hate because I gave myself so little time to do it. What I actually mean is my state of mind is becoming more professional about everything, so organisation and taking time to do everything is slowly winning me over. After all, I want to produce work to the best of my ability with the maximum time utilized.

Every year it seems I end up having the most ‘productive’ year of my life and this definitely has set a high mark even though I am not 100% satisfied with everything I did. Just by browsing through some of the second year’s artwork I can already see that next year will be filled with new challenges and it also raises the bar on productivity. At the level I am at now I know before I arrive there, I’ll have to put some hard work in to keep up with all those briefs during the summer. Now to dig deep into building some personal work!