First things first, I've definitely decided on my pathway, I already had it in mind when I chose the course, and my mind hasn't changed at all, the pathway I'm taking is Virtual Environments. It combines 3 things I'm very keen on, Virtual Reality, Games Design and Animation, it's a sort of mecca for me right now XD. I'm currently in the progress of writing my 2nd essay which is all about design pathways for the course and pracititioners from the area you're interesed in. Embrassingly, I've only started the intro, but I will amp up the work done on it immediately, I'll explain later why I haven't gto as much of it done as Im meant to.
After being recommended a book by Roma and Jools doing a lecture on books, I decided to set out and get borrowing books from the library...finally lol. It was definitely a great idea, as I was a kid in a candy store when I found the games design and animation sections, hence i've gota lot of books to talk about now XD. Roma recommended me a book called "The Skillful Huntsman", which is all about the recreation of a particular book by graduates and students/teachers from one of the world's leading art schools which is based in America (Art Centre College of Design, Pasadena in California). the book is all about the design process the artists when through when they were designing the visual piece. What attracted me was how they devleoped the characters, they started out with hundreds of miniscule but pretty detailed thumbnail sketches of a character, and built up the character through increasingly complex stages, involving larger, more detailed sketches, silhouette forms, drawings of the head alone etc. It's really fascinating to see how they go from simple, tiny sketches to extremely detailed, awe inspiring, much larger sketches in the end which become the character you see eventually.
Moving on, I bought some books after borrowing them from the library and finding them really useful for the course, especially with the pathway I've chosen and they will also help wih my personal work and eventual career a lot too. I'm jsut going to list the books instead of describing them, as this blog is going to be very, very long without me describing them anwyays! The books that I think are really useful, and definitely worth a look for anyone considering Virtual Environments are:
- Animating Real Time Game Characters - Paul Steed
- Video Game Art - Nick Kelman
- The Complete Guide To Game Development, Art & Design -David McCathy, Ste Curran and Simon Byron
- Inspired 3D Short Film Production - Jeremy Cantor, Pepe Valencia
- The Skillful Huntsman - Khang Le, Mike Yamada, Felix Yoon, Scott Robertson
As it stands, I'm currently undergoing life drawing classes as well as doing as my own sketches to boost my drawing skills as much as possible, as I'm aiming to be a character artist or an animator. I've done 2 classes now, but the term is finished so I have to go in the next term now. Our tutor reckons we shouldn't think about textures till at least 20 weeks into the course though, which could be in the 2nd year possibly. I have no real experience with drawing to be honest, I didnt really practise that much in the past, and I had such a "rollercoaster" experience with my drawings in the past before I upgraded to a tablet, I got put off it and decided to try wing it purely as a technical animator somehow. I've regained my determination to draw again though, as you can tell from what I've done above and my previous blog posts.
It is extremely difficult for me right now though, thankfully the life drawing classes are over, as in 2 weeks time, I have major exams for Japanese which are the last ones for this year, the super evil sounding oral exam is after the easter holidays though. In that same week, I have a 10 minute presentation to do for the Identities project, and also hand in the essay I mentioned earlier, due to my neighbours dogs barking for hours everyday and sending me into a near mental breakdown alone from that! I am going to try coming into uni to work now though as I've had enough now, I may use Boots Library's study rooms actually, or just go into Waverley, especially for computer based work. I have been reduced to tears practically from stress lately, and I'm currently finding things extremely difficult, the hardest part of my life so far, but I'm pulling through slowly. With life drawing, it's going to take me AGES to even do anywhere near decent drawings, and for someone with low patience and a tendency to get put off easily due to too much self reflection, comparison to other examples and lack of immediate results, this is so going to be "fun".
Finally, with the Identities project so far, I've got some of the elements built already as you will have seen from my blogs. Ive got my ideas sorted now, and Im trying to go for the table idea with comic books on it for the hub of the box. My logo has been made now, I've already got 1 of my additional elements ready which is one of my Phoenix Wrong videos (a compilation verison made exclusively for this), and the other additional element is gonna be a slideshow of all the drawings I will have done by mid April ish. Since I can easily make the slideshow quickly through Sony Vegas, Im leaving it till last and gettign everything else sorted including building the actual box. I'm still trying to master Bipeds, Walking and Facial Animation in 3Ds Max, and also learn how to make a table in it (I learn how to make a book). Hence, Im still trying to build my 3D avatar, but I definitely know how it will look, if you want to know what it will look like, check the blog before this one ;D. I also want to make some additional 3D avatar pets for my avatar himself, which are characters I made up and are quite fond of, so Ill try to make them in time for this project.
That's everything about what's going on with me at the moment I think anyways, ill update again in the future to let you know how the project is coming along then.
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