Personal Review of the Second Year

The primary purpose of a university is the advancement of knowledge. Whether this means educating about pre-existing knowledge or advancing research.

With this in mind, what I want to get out of my time at University is not just existing knowledge but the ability to develop said knowledge further to be a more effective game artist.

When I leave University I hope to be able to get a job, but that is mostly out of necessity. If I feel my work still isn’t up to industry level I will want to keep furthering my learning for a better portfolio. Of course even in industry I will need to keep learning to keep up with advancements in technology and ensure I am the best I can be at what I do.

Now that I am almost at the end of year two, I do feel like I am starting to really get the hang of all the software and their best uses. I’m quite proud of several of the models I produced this year. Of course, I still have a long way to go.

Currently I think that aspects I particularly need to improve on are effective use of textures and my speed in creating them. I have found that this year I have improved significantly with modeling speed, starting to effectively use modifiers and understand the importance of modularity.

Year 1 Vehicle Project VS Year 2 Vehicle Project

On top of this, I’m starting to gain a better understanding of the conditions I work best under and things that help me learn. Especially in the latter half of the academic year, my productivity had increased an awful lot due to my improved routine and time management. Plus as a side effect of this other aspects of my life such as diet and sleeping patterns have improved too.

This year has had a lot of challenging times, especially early on, as I’ve had to learn my best approach to each project through trial and error. One thing I realized I had a big problem with was allocating time to different stages of a project. This was particularly evident with the building front project, where the total time I spent on it was more than enough, but too little of that time was spent on the texturing as I was too focused on getting the mesh perfect.

The building project. Too much time wasted on the details, but the potential was there.

Balancing multiple projects at once still can cause some problems and it is a challenge having to decide on the priority of different tasks, but I consider this to be an important life skill that I just have to learn.

Over summer I want to take a lot of texture photos and compile more tillable textures from these photos. I also think it might be a good idea to set myself some small projects just to keep things I have learned fresh in my mind over those four months, and to make re-starting at the beginning of year three less of a shock to the system.

At the moment I have very little work that I feel I can put in my portfolio, so I am looking forward to the FMP where I hope to produce something of value. So far my experience in Uni has been primarily to practice and advance my skills so I know they aren’t my absolute best. When I leave Uni I want to have produced something I am proud of so I can show potential employers (and myself) what I can really do.