Task 12: Personal review of the first year

When I first started the course my main worry was learning to use 3DS Max, I’m not bad with computers but I was a bit overwhelmed with the size of the programme. But I picked it up surprisingly quickly and I think it is now my strongest subject, because I enjoy it and I like building pretty much anything in this virtual 3D space.  I found the layout of the course strengthen my ability with this programme.

I was really interested in the critical studies lectures because I liked learning about the journey of the game industry. I wish we had more opportunity to do presentations because I liked presenting my interests in a more formal way.  

I also really enjoyed taking my visual design and combining it with the 3D. I particularly enjoyed the gun project because creating it visually and making it physically it made me look at my design process in a better, different way. In future 3D projects I want to make a small model because I think it will help make me look at how I’m designing and creating a piece.   

I really enjoyed making physical 3D models but I found it hard to effectively manipulate my materials, so I think I would benefit from tutorials on how to do this. I’ve been getting better throughout the year but I think I would benefit from some help.

I struggled with the amount of work set because I didn’t have the ability to juggle between projects and to keep momentum through projects I didn’t like. I found parts of visual design hard because I found it difficult to change my style of drawing. I found developing my rendering skills really hard because I didn’t have the ability to see shadows and show them in my drawing.  Although when I started the contour project it made me think about getting the visual information on the page quickly. I was concentrating more on speed than perfection so it made me look more at the object more which in turn made my drawings better because I wasn’t over thinking what I was doing.  

I would also say that I would benefit from some Photoshop workshops because I don’t have a great knowledge of digital painting. So I can’t take my traditional skills and apply them to Photoshop because I’m still using the same technique as before and I don’t feel that this element has improved very much. I feel like my digital paintings are behind because I’m not sure of the system. I’ve tried to learn by myself but I’ve found it quite difficult.

I really enjoyed life drawing! I would have liked to have started sooner because I enjoyed it so much and my drawing abilities improved dramatically because of these sessions. I would like to have the opportunity to do this more next year to further improve my drawings skills.

Overall I’ve really enjoyed this year, I’ve enjoyed what we’ve been doing, admittedly sometimes the amount over shadowed this, but I understand that without all my work I wouldn’t be at the stage I am now. I feel like I’m now ready to progress to the second year and I’m eager to develop the skills I’ve learnt from my 1^st.