As I
type this I'm settling in for my first night back in Dunblane for summer, I've
semi unpacked and what mess remains has been distributed and organized across
my floor instead of being put away properly but I guess that's what the rest of
the holiday is for. Leaving Leicester also signals the long overdue end to
second year (which was almost beginning to feel like it never would) and a
review is on the cards.
I've had the drive up to mull over what I want to talk about and I hope
to keep the post as concise as I can which I've definitely been improving
over the year. As I've grown more confident in my writing I've cut back on the
waffling, improved the flow of my posts and increased the amount
and frequency of content I'm outputting. While perhaps not so much in
the first half of the year I feel I've better paced and structured my blogging
routine juggling both course tasks and personal posts to avoid a last minute
rush to meet the deadlines and keep up a weekly schedule although this has
been a bit temperamental at times thanks to the demands of the rest
of the course. One flaw I'd raise against myself is labelling my sources and
while I feel I've definitely improved from first year there's still some room
for development there. As an overview of critical studies though I'm pleased
with the progression I've been able to make over the past months and moving
forward I hope to continue to see the improvement in my writing.
There's been a lot of progress in Visual Design and to avoid stepping on my
toes and repeating myself from last week's post I'll keep this a short
paragraph. In second year most of these improvements have been on the theory side
of things, the fundamentals such as composition, form, colour to list a few. Up
to this point the majority of these principles have felt near unobtainable,
veiled concepts that I could barely scratch the surface of but after studying
them they're beginning to permeate into my work and become more prevalent as I grow
more confident with them. On the practical side of the affair I've continued to
progress and tackle the issues from last year such as depth and the application
of the fundamentals which as you've just read is something I'm actively
tackling however confidence in my work is still an issue and this is more
prevalent in my digital work. Digital has been one of the greatest challenges
for me this year and being relatively new to the medium has forced me to
improve fast to keep the overall quality of my work from dropping too much. I
do feel that I've picked up some areas of digital painting such as
photo-compositing quite quickly however I feel my underlying brushwork and
painting is lacking which does worry me as I don't want to rely on photos or
textures to create a solid painting. This has brought down my confidence when
it comes to painting but I know the only way to get over this is to paint which
will be a focus for me next year.
Then there's Game Production which rounds off the three modules for the year
and has been perhaps the most demanding. Since Christmas it feels like I've
been playing catch up and it is in no doubt due to prioritizing the BMW art
test over the course work and hopefully the botched character project won't
come back to haunt me come results which is this week if I remember correctly.
Anyway, this year I feel like I'm finally being to become more competent with
my textures, especially my character resubmission minus the seam issues that
could easily be fixed with more time but in regards to stuff like material
definition there’s definitely development. My pace has also improved over the
year but I feel it is something that could be worked on and during the group
project while I produced solid models/textures I felt these could have been
done at a faster speed. The group project also really helped to strength my
time management and organisation due to the team's reliance on me. I found the group
dynamic to be a great work environment and I believe I really excelled within
it and I'm ultimately very proud of what we were able to produce leading up to
the summer.
After summer however I won't be returning to Leicester and as I've mentioned on
here and as I'm sure some of you already know I am bound to Munich for the year
to work at BMW. This is of course a fantastic opportunity to experience a
whole new country, life in the workplace and an aspect of 3D art that's not
really taught at DMU with what I’ll be working on leaning more towards the VFX
and visualisation industries. Obviously I'm looking forward to this and the
learning opportunities that I'll hopefully be able to throw myself at when I'm
final out there.
This of course means leaving my year which I'm honestly absolutely gutted at.
They've been the best year group I could've wanted and it's been an absolute
joy and a privilege to study, learn and, especially this year, really flourish
in our individual specialisations alongside them. They've made the past two
years what they are and it’s such a shame that I won't be there to finish third
year with them.
Second year has ended on a mixed note, I'm excited about where I'm going as an
artist with my work and moving to Germany but at the cost of leaving behind
some of my bests friends and while I'm sure I'll see many of them in the
future, of that I have no doubt, third year will not be the same without them.
When the results of the year are out I'll make a small post about it here but
I've a good feeling and hopefully the progression I've made and the effort I've
put in will be rewarded but we'll have to wait and see. Then I'm Munich bound
at the end of the month and in a year’s time come September I'll be making my
return to Leicester for my third and final year of university.
Now isn't that a scary thought.
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