BA3a Research Report - My Idea & Structure

Brief

Write a 5000 Word Essay relating to our subject area and interests.

" This area of your project will address historical, theoretical research methods that will help you to critically engage with your work. You will be guided in planning, researching and writing a sustained research report. Your independent research report may be wholly or partially concerned with investigating contextual issues concerned with your studio project, but in all cases it will focus on a coherent subject for rigorous academic analysis. You will have received feedback from your 1,000-word draft research report enabling you to develop a final 5,000-word research report or a 10,000 word extended research report. Research also focuses and corroborates the development of your creative work in the unit. All findings must be documented with clarity as this will under pin the progress of your work throughout the rest of the year. The technical facets of your project(s) should be documented in equal part to the creative and contextual aspects of the unit. "

My Idea

My research report will be a reflective essay on how my workflow differentiates between creating stylised hand painted assets and realistic. I have chosen this topic specifically because one of my final goals as a concept artist is to work for Blizzard, and I want to continue improving my 3D and hand painted texturing skills as I know many of their concept artists do both when working there. I will be creating two assets for this, one stylised hand painted and the other realistic; analysing my workflow for both and making informative conclusions and statements with how they differ. I will be using software I have never used before such as 3DCoat and Substance Painter, which will be a new learning curve while writing my report. Although it doesn’t directly link to my creative practice project, I want to become more versatile within my skillset which is why I am focusing on my concept art skills for the long project and using 3D for the essay. I also believe that becoming more competent with 3D is very useful for a concept artist as well as being a bonus skill for most concept art job descriptions. I will firstly be submitting a 1000 word draft however, which will relate to realism, the ‘uncanny valley’ and mimesis.