Making Progress

It sure has been a while since my last post. I managed to pass the first year and have moved into the second year of my course. A few of us have failed to move on, about 15 I believe, which is quite a large percentage of us and it's still expected that a number of us won't make it past the second year. A scary thought indeed, especially when a couple of guys who I personally thought would make it through the first year failed to do so. Comes to show that this course won't accept slackers of any kind.

For this post I wanted cover how I felt about the first year now that I have passed and and now continuing into the second. The things we have been taught and tasks we have been assigned to complete certainly have helped me grasp and understand the fundamental skills that is needed as a game artist. Surprisingly I have learned alot more on this course than I ever have before, A-level and GCSE haven't been terribly helpful to me so this course is pretty much a godsend. The treasure chest task I am assigned to do for game production was easier to model than I initially expected, certainly found it easier than the Ford Transit I had to do last year which I had a little trouble with. It's nice to see that I have made some progress, hopefully I'll be able to manage the tougher projects that are yet to come.

While I remember saying how Facebook was a clever idea for putting up work for others to look at and crit, I'm beginning to feel less attached with the website as a whole. Seeing that I'm such an anti-social bum it should be no surprise that my interest in any form of social-networking quickly fades away. I tend to visit Facebook less often now and anytime I do I'm just there to upload work and very briefly look at the latest posts. Not that I'm saying using Facebook is a bad thing, in fact I strongly agree that the use of Facebook on this course is incredibly useful especially during my first year so the course should continue to use it until there is a better alternative.

To finish off I'd like sound off my current ambitions. It is quite obvious that I want to complete the course so I think to talk what I hope to achieve after I graduate. Honestly I currently don't have a huge goal like being a Leading Art Director of a big name studio. Right now I'm aiming to get a job specifically at Sony Cambridge, making it less of a financial hassle seeing that I have a home in Cambridge and mainly because they have been involved in projects that I personally enjoyed playing, namely WipEout, MediEvil and LittleBigPlanet. If I fail to get a job there I also hear that there are several other developers based in Cambridge which I can consider working for, one being Jagex famous for developing the MMO Runescape. I can't say whether I want to be a character or environment artist just yet, but just as long as I can get a job as an artist at a game studio then I consider that a major goal in life accomplished.

References:
http://www.worldwidestudios.net/cambridge
http://www.jagex.com/careers