First year is over, lets review!

The first year is pretty much over, final hand in is tomorrow and a long summer break is looming in the distance. So what better time to reflect on how shit my work used to be in comparison to now – especially after presenting all my work, I’ve had a chance to glance at everything and see that maybe, I have improved in certain areas.

The majority of the first term, I was learning something new every day. It was fantastic, learning new skills and feeling as though I am progressing even after doing nothing. Having never actually done perspective or environments before – or if I had, never doing them in a technical or accurate way – I was producing for lack of better words, complete crap. Getting the basics down was more important than rendering, and when I’d gotten what I thought was pretty accurate line work in a thumbnail, when it was transferred to a larger scale and I attempted to render it, it completely went to pot. In reality I feel I'm still the same as this, and need a lot more work doing to perspective to improve - so much so that it's almost an impossible feat really, but hell never know unless you try I guess. This mainly refers to 2 point perspective - as I've not improved in this in the slightest.

2 point perspective still super needs work

Term 2 was abysmal - I produced substandard, uninspired work throughout it's entirety and ended up with a barely passing grade because of it. I plateaued, with little to no progression in anything - uni work or anything outside of uni, and if anything declined in my works standard. This including design projects and observational ones. I produced a terrible character, a poor nonsensical vehicle and poor studies of still lives involving people. In addition to this, I discovered I can't use marker pens for rendering, nor can I produce quick ridleogram style drawings to a decent standard.

The final term is where I feel the majority of the improvement has occurred this year - maybe that's because it's the most recent and therefore the freshest in my mind, or perhaps because we produced a comparison piece as one of the projects. This was one of the more enjoyable projects, as it has shown the course to be helpful to me, and after the second year I felt that's exactly what I needed. 

The newer bradgate drawing shows that I've improved on the concept of levelling within an image, and whilst I feel the final for this year is somewhat lazy and empty looking, it shows I'm beginning to gain a grasp on the level of details between the foreground, mid ground and background. Also apparently I can somewhat draw rocks. Cool beans.

 

Another comparative piece is the 3 hour final piece produced at the end of the year - this being done at the same museum in which we did rendering techniques on dinosaur bones in the first term. For me, it felt a lot more fluid in producing the second - coming together a lost smoother. It would have been nice to do a true comparison between the two - maybe produce another bone based final as opposed to taxidermy.

In addition to these, I feel my ability to design characters, or other objects, has additionally improved - going from substandard "I hate silhouettes they're stupid why am I doing this" to a more accepting "okay maybe they're worth it" view, and this representing itself in my work. From the interesting character in term 2, to the Reef and then finally the 1970's inspired character, I feel I've not only gotten better in my drawing ability, but become more thorough in my research, as well as my ability in representing certain themes, and acquiring said theme to begin with.
My technique is another thing I have felt improve. Normally I'm really anal and neat - I enjoy seeing clean line work before I start doing a painting, whether it be digital or traditionally. The masters study has shown me that I can do different styles without catastrophic results. Choosing Jenny Saville was definitely the right choice as it's pushed and challenged my abilities. Normally I dislike recreating artists - I understand it's a brilliant way to learn new techniques and styles and that "imitation is the best form of flattery" or whatever, but most of the time it just feels like I'm ticking a box with it - doing it because I was told I had to to get the grades, it feels pathetic and cheap - like cheating... then again, I feel the same about overly referencing for images I create, and I know I'm definitely wrong in that view. However I enjoyed doing this project, and may play around with this style of painting again in my spare time.

Although I have improved in some areas, there's still a lot to improve upon and I'm looking forward to seeing myself progress further. One thing I super enjoyed was the modelling in visual design, so creating the reef character and dare say it, making the weapon. More to the point where it gets you to visualise something in a completely different way, and makes a project more solid when there's a transfer from materials from a 2D design to a 3D sculpture. In addition to this, it makes modelling something on 3Ds Max a lot easier as you have a physical sculpture. It's another aspect I'm looking forward to improving on in the future.

Game production improvement has been more noticeable than in visual design - my topology has improved, as well as my construction and my patients whilst creating. In addition to this, my texture application and unwrapping has improved - but this is something that has been done every project, so has had a lot more time to improve in comparison to 2D's projects with varying aims. One thing that has somewhat bugged me with 3D is the limitations on texture and tri limits - however at the same time I understand how the lower budget on these allows focus on learning.