Looking back at 2010, I didn't get as much done as I'd have liked to, but I feel like I made a lot of progress. I learned a lot about level design from working in the Hammer editor on my own Alien Swarm and TF2 maps. While I don't feel I gained much from my classes in my first year at University, I have about 5 Game Design related units to look forward to this year, so things should start getting better.
I've not made a lot of use of my blog, but that's mostly because there's not much to report on. The units I took in my first year were all really required intro classes - Contexts of Modernity, Representation and Interpretation, classes on WWW and Actionscript, as well as Visual Game Design. In the next 2 years all my units start really focusing on what I want to be doing rather than what the University feels I need to understand to do what I want, so I will have a lot more to talk about.
The Visual Game Design class was easily the one I enjoyed most. Which surprised me - Visual Game Design turned out to be a traditional art class. Traditional art scares the crap out of me. I do not consider myself a great traditional artist. I don't draw often, most of my skills are PC oriented. So when I found out that Visual Game Design was going to be a Traditional Art class, I started to panic.
Our lecturer, however, was amazing. The idea of the class was more to dedicate yourself to something for the long haul than it was to actually churn out amazing art. The plan was that we'd draw up a character of our own design for the first few weeks, then actually sculpt it by hand and in ZBrush (which I can now officially say I hate). So, I sucked up my concern about drawing and dedicated myself to it.
What I turned out with by the end of the semester I was actually... well, kinda impressed with.
I mean sure, it's no Picasso. But as the first sculpt I've ever done based on drawings I made, it's far better than I was expecting the end result to be.
I have to admit that I'd like to do another sculpt again some time. It's a lot of fun - very chill.
The past year has made me think a lot about my future and what I want. I was considering taking another 2 years at University after I graduate to get a Masters Degree, but I'm unsure. So much of this I have to play by ear - I don't know what the situation will be with Game Development in WA by the time I graduate, or if I'll even have the money to move interstate or overseas to get work by the time I do. I would love to be doing game design more than casually. To do it for a living. And it scares the hell out of me that I'll get out of University with all this debt for a course that won't benefit me at all in finding work.
I'm trying to live day to day and improve on myself as I go. I don't want to make plans that might never come to fruition. Self improvement is all well and good on a day to day basis, but self improvement isn't guaranteed to get me a job - or pay off the debt I'll have accumulated. In the mean time I intend to enjoy every moment of my time at University.
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