Reflection. Let's meditate. Nah that's boring, let's play games!

So it's the time of year again when I head back to Leicester to start my second year at university. It's been a tough first year. The stress was tremendous and it felt like it was going to be the death of me. But what I’ve learnt from that year has significantly helped me to push through. In all honesty, despite the ups and downs, the successes and failures, the saved work and the corrupted work, everything that I had done and achieved has taught me something invaluable. To never give up. I always felt like in first year that I should give up. That this course isn't for me. That I am not as good as everyone else. That I will never get anywhere with this career path. But how can I think that when this is what I want to do. When this is something that I want to pursue until my death. I want to make games, play games, enjoy games, put myself in games and be the game. I am happy with my life to be revolved around games. What else would I do? Play games in which I wished I worked on later in life. No. I wasn't going to let the first year defeat me. I guess that's what normally happens. Others find it too hard and think “this isn't for me”. Maybe that's the test. The trial. Did I pass? I hope so. Will I move on and become greater? I hope so. Do I still want to do this? Without a doubt yes.


Being a first year was very daunting. I knew nothing. I was such a “noob” at everything. Even my traditional skills felt like a 2 year old trying to colour within the lines. Even then I felt like I couldn't do that. I tried and tried again to prove that I will learn and will push forward. I felt that everything I did in first year has helped me to get to where I am now. I learnt everything I needed for a simple low-poly model in 3DS Max. I learnt more of perspective and techniques to use in my traditional and learnt more about form from life drawing. I wouldn't have got anywhere if I didn't model that Dalek, or that building or that gladiator. I wouldn't of been able to learn about form if I didn't go to life drawing, or learn about 2pt perspective if I hadn't of gone to that lecture. So every lesson, every button, every step that I took to get to where I am now has been invaluable.


So over the Summer holidays I thought about this a lot. Where would I have been if I hadn't of pursued this course. If I hadn't of done the work, if I hadn't of stuck to those deadlines. In all honesty I don't know. I can't think of my life without this course or this work. This is all I know now and this is all I want now. I want to carry on. I want to take those skills that I learnt from first year and put it all into my work for second year and more. There will always be things that I learn over the course of the year that I never knew about or never refined. If there was no learning in life then the world would be perfect as we would know everything. But I don't, and that's for sure. I don't know everything. I still think about what this button does and what that button does. Sometimes I even wonder if I pressed any button. Sounds weird to think of it like that. Have I truly pressed any buttons or am I just doing this with my mind. In theory yes. I am working with my mind, I'm not just on production mode and producing models that are standard. Everything I do is thought about, over and over again. You work with the model, with the flow. Sometimes it doesn't always work and wonder where the hell it went wrong. But if everything was perfect all the time. I think it would be pretty boring!


Over the past year I've learnt more about time-scale. I've learnt more about my strengths. I've learnt more about my weaknesses. Weaknesses aren't something to be ashamed of, they are something to take and work around it. You either refine your skills to get better, or you work with it. Replace it with something. There is always something. You just work around it. Sometimes you can even play around with techniques and see whether you can merge more than one together to get to the end goal. It's the same principal and that's how I’ve learnt. Either refine or merge. There is no point trying to avoid it forever. You can't avoid traditional work and just stick to digital work. You have to have a crossover of both, but you can always have more of one than the other. With time-scale you have to ensure that you use it to your strengths and weaknesses. If something is inevitable but you are not confident in your skills to accomplish the task, then ensure you have longer to work on it, and the key things that you are good at, you give yourself enough time to get it done. It can be a hit and miss sometimes. But you've just got to keep trying. That's what I did a lot. I missed a lot, and hit sometimes.



But second year is all about putting everything into practise. Spending the summer relaxing and reflecting has helped a lot. Now is the time to put everything I’ve learnt into practise. This year I am looking forward to, and this year will be one of the more refined years for when the final year comes around. It's going to be quick, and it's going to hurt if I don't work to it. So I am prepared and I am ready. 

Yeah! All the work!