BA3b Creative Practice

Week 13 - Self Evaluation

- Going Forward

Self Evaluation

Intro

It's strange to think that this project is now over and my time at university will have come to an end. I feel like I improved a huge amount from my first year and I look forward to what the coming years will bring for me! I think this project tested my skills and allowed me to finish many pieces - whether successfully or unsuccessfully. I also managed to apply for jobs and was one of the Top 5 people considered for the Concept Art internship for Rare which was pretty amazing, even though I didn't get it, as well as attending the Ukie Student Conference and EGX Rezzed. I understand that my scheduling has been rather different to what I planned,although that's mainly due to me focusing on the environments first and then the characters - when what I originally planned was the other way around.

Positives

I'm really happy to have fully completed portfolio pieces I can use from this project, which is probably one of my favourite things to come out of this. I can also really see the growth from BA3a to BA3b, as my characters look much more refined and suitable for a portfolio than the ones from BA3a. I was also pretty proud of how I created my horse iterations, as the base horse I drew looked fundamentally really cool in my opinion - even though I used a base photo and painted over it. I was also able to speak to many interesting people at the events I went to and the experience of taking part in the actual interview process for a job was scary but very rewarding at the end.

Improvements

I could've done more development work and I really will need to work on how fast I can create forms that look fundamentally correct without me going into much detail with them, but this will come in time. I have started to improve this with how I drew my horses but will need to continue to apply this to environment thumbnails and human characters. Not only this but I will need to become more confident in painting environments and lighting a full scene.

Conclusion

I think overall, even though I didn't do as much development work as I would have liked, I feel that I achieved my main goal from this project which was to create some portfolio pieces to a standard I felt reflected my current highest ability and I really can say I have done my best work with some of them. Even though one of my environment and promotional pieces I feel didn't go so well, it's highlighted to me what areas really need my focus to improve upon. I know it may seem I'm more negative than positive when it comes to my work but I know that it's essential for me to improve if I want to succeed in this industry as well as becoming a better artist in general.

Going Forward After University

One More Year to Practice

I will be doing an MA starting in September at Birmingham City University, which I will put my everything into to be fully prepared to enter the industry after that year. I will be intensely practising the next 7 months and putting all my time into study as I wish to try again and apply for the concept artist internship at Rare and hopefully get hired this time, as it's a company I really want to work for and I don't want to stop trying! My dream has always been to also work at Blizzard and I will be doing everything I can to improve to help me get closer to that goal!