Monday 29 October 2012

Planning and Concepting


     Planning and concepting is an important aspect of creating and finishing a final piece. It helps to develop an idea into something you can work with.
     To be a successful artist you need to first understand how to plan, this goes from planning what techniques to time and to spacing on a page. Everything needs to be efficiently planned otherwise time can be wasted, and time is very important in the gaming industry, as deadlines are a key part to a successful game. Planning is the first stage of developing anything. Even if you do not write anything down, you mentally create a “to-do” list and plan out how to tackle the problem in your mind. Plans will change as you begin working on them as you realise better ways of tackling issues. This is a natural process of planning.
     Planning is incredibly useful when it comes to tackling a brief or problem in a brief, timescales and lists are an efficient way of keeping track of the tasks you have to complete.
     Concepting is where you start putting the plan in motion, you have a general idea of how to conclude a task and you begin by sketching ideas, bouncing back and forth from one idea to the next to get a good section of different images. You find what works with an image and develop it further, sorting out any issues or design flaws or drawing failures. Concepting includes a lot of rough sketches and experimenting with styles and thoughts. Thumbnails are a great and efficient way of portraying a general idea in a small amount of time, these generally accumulate and evolve into a singular idea for a final piece to handle the brief. So from beginning with loads of random inspired thumbnails you can defer a better idea and develop it further.
     Concepting and planning can come in many forms, moodboards, spider diagrams, words, sentences, doodles, diagrams, thumbnails, they are all produced to create quick ideas and begin the means to an end. Before this stage, nothing has really been created or thought about. This is where you can begin the motion to getting a final piece.
     Without proper planning and concepting a project can quickly become mis-directed and lost within the see of imagination and thoughts. It is a lot easier for a human to understand a way of getting to a set goal if the plan is clearly in front of them, it then produces a design that flows well and reaches the end target, which is the main reason for a brief to be set. It is a key part for a gaming organisation to have staff members that are proficient and resourceful when it comes to the planning stage of the development cycle.
    When attacking a brief i will have to keep these two important steps in mind if I want to create a high-quality outcome for the project and the brief.

Monday 22 October 2012

Year Two


Hello year two. It’s nice to meet you.

  A lot of things have become clear to me in the few months off over the summer. The break allowed me to go back and look through thee first year being critical of the work I have done and how I approached the course. Looking back at the first few pieces of work I produced for both visual design and game production made me feel both proud and embarrassed. I can’t believe I have come this far in the space of a year. Yes, the other participants on the course have done as well. I came straight from college with hardly any artistic knowledge and no 3d knowledge at all. Now, I know how to make my perspective correct, how to check anatomy and different techniques when it comes to drawing. With regards to the 3d work, I could hardly create a box when we first started, and now I’m creating knights and tree houses with textures and normal/specular maps. I’m learning something new each and every day.

   Year two I will concentrate on getting these skills correct and putting them into practise. The first year I was stumbling around, now I feel like I’m at walking pace. This doesn’t mean anything will be easier, definitely not. But at least I know where I went wrong in the first year and how I can improve on that, and that is important. It’s alright to make mistakes as long as you can recognise them and know how to change them or stop them happening again.

    I’m very anxious and incredibly excited about the upcoming work. I expect to develop my knowledge of digital painting and the use of colours to portray emotional concepts and meanings in my work. As well as testing and trying new and exciting methods of drawing and colouring, as well as developing a better understanding of 3ds max. I am here to learn new things and progress through to the next year with an even larger understanding of the artistic world both traditionally and digitally.

    I need to make sure to focus on my time managing skills as well, as this is something I found very difficult to control on the first year. I will need to make sure to give myself proper time limits and recognise when I’m wasting time on something. I also need to increase the speed at which I draw, I shall practise creating thumbnails at variable speeds to improve on this skill. However, I shall not just focus on one area of the course, I shall divide my time up to gain a “jack of all trades” understanding as this is the kind of thing that the industry is looking for. It means I wouldn’t be a specialist in just one thing but have a more rounded understanding. This is useful as technology advances very quickly in industry, so I would need to be able to learn things quickly and if I specialised in something that was replaced, it would mean that I would be replaced as well, with someone who can adapt better.

    In conclusion, looking at my first years work I know that I can do better this year, I have not yet hit my peak. I look forward to the opportunity to learn more. Knowledge is power.