First of all, I apologise for the rather personal outlook I put on this journal, but its been a subject that I've been meaning to get off my chest for a long time.
Self Motivation and Time Management.
These are two aspects of work that I find myself having a lot of trouble with, over the years I have become awfully complacent, procrastinating at every end, and I think to a degree I have become somewhat addicted to the internet, in all I really get distracted easily from the tasks at hand, which in my case would be university work.
I don't think I'm alone when it comes to lack of self motivation and time management, after doing some research leading me to some self motivational sites, I found some sites where their reasons for the lack of motivation, certainly rings home. Here's a list of reasons I found on one particular site:
1. Lack of Confidence
2. Lack of Focus
3. Lack of Direction
I think these describe where I am at the moment quite well, looking back at how I was when I first started university, I was enthusiastic I believed I could do great things, I was doing work on time and learning, however as time passed and I find myself not being so articulate with the likes of 3dstudio max say compared to my peers, I feel like I have barely accomplished anything. I understand that being in the game artist field I shouldn't really be thinking that, and I really don't want to but at times it really does cloud my mind.
However in my opinion it is the last two points which I think mostly lead to the lack of self motivation. Focus in particular, a lack of focus is a huge problem it leaves a person without a cause, making them believe their actions to be useless in the process if all they are working towards is nothing. In the case of our game course it's to become professional game artists, which I think helps with the overall focus of students, but there is a down side to this, one site described the lack of focus on ambitions due to a person focusing more on the failures of such ambitions. Using the course as an example we have "I will Fail and become a useless artist" "My skills are poor, how can I thrive in such a business" or actually in some cases "Can I handle the Game Art Industry with all its harsh conditions" which is only backed up by news of millions of workers being made redundant. While it may not necessarily affect me in the long term since I still have years to go, I feel like my goal of becoming a game artist somewhat wander, it does not help that becoming a game artist is my first truly strong ambition, for someone like me where for the majority of my life I had only thought about becoming an artist in whatever field, sticking to a career choice was a hard one yet one I'm willing to uphold.
I'm one who can be easily removed of his focus if I have other things in my mind, when my grandmother died I was distraught and the thought still makes me feel empty, these kind of thoughts almost make me lose focus instantly, worrying more about changes in my life as well my family and how they'll cope with the loss. While I do not blame it for my lack of self motivation, I can't help it when such news moves me so and take up most of my focus.
Which leads to how such things could be averted, at times I try to be optimistic, but usually it comes off hollow and mute, but the key to keeping focus is to aim for the grander things in life and as corny as it seem believe in your abilities to do so. Like in my case I should be focusing on my career goals, I should put aside my fears and really put all focus into what I want, the idea of going in with the idea of no defeat can be attributed here into the mental state I should use to approach work where I cannot focus on the failures but on the positive outcomes of my work, if my work is bad I should think about how to improve it, if I fail, think of a way to get you back on track. The key point here is to not accept defeat.
This brings me to the final point in the list, Lack of Direction, even if you have optimistic ideals if you go about them wrongly it will not lead to the desired results. If you have no idea of the importance of certain activities it can often lead to procrastination, something I am awfully guilty of. The site where I got the list from has an interesting take on how a blogger can lose focus when aiming to having a popular blog, they read more about how to make the ultimate blog than spending their time in actually making the thing. I guess this can be attributed to artists in that they can spend hours upon hours reading up on the latest techniques but in the end getting nowhere as they have failed to attempt to even practice these techniques. This is where it is important to prioritise your activities, because as it is, it is very easy to be distracted, in my case the internet itself where I spend more time ogling other people's work than working on my own or doing filler activities like checking my emails or replying to messages on facebook.
It is here where it is important to always have your important tasks on mind to avoid forgetting about them and leading to procrastination. For university students such as I the main priority will always be university work, which is something I too often forget. In fact so that I am reminded of so, these are what an artist in general should hold in priorities hierarchy;
1. If any work is to be handed in, be it university related, or even a commission or work, if there's a deadline, you must finish that work.
2. Practice, The more you practice the better you can be at providing quality work.
3. Everything else, this may seem vague but when my goal is to become a game artist I believe it's my work that will get me remotely anywhere in the industry.
I think not having such a complicated list is perfect to tackle this, it leaves your focus to be clear and precise. Which leads me to the next topic at hand, time management.
After all that, while you may have the motivation to do something, dedicating time to the wrong things or losing your focus because you have no clear time scale can lead to procrastination. I guess in a way it puts your priorities into perspective. It would be no good if you spend all your time working, while productive can lead to poor results because of fatigue, and well general burnout, there is only enough work one can handle and at times you should take a rest. This is where time management comes into play, you should organise your day around your priorities, create a timetable of sorts for you daily routine. This is where I have faltered in the past, I do not plan my days, it's always do what I do when it happens, which isn't a healthy lifestyle at all, there must be some degree of planning or else things like work can be overlooked.
To begin with recognise and understand your priorities, work should really come first in my case so I should dedicate the majority of my free time after classes to do some extra work, practice my skills etc, after I have planned that I can set aside time for other things like socialising or playing games. There is also the 80/20 rule, this rule states that 80 percent of our typical activities contribute less than 20 percent to the value of our work, so if you do the 20 percent of important activities you will get the most value out of your work. To follow the rule you should look at important urgent tasks first, ones that are more likely to get you into trouble or cause future problems, once they're out of the way you look at important long term tasks, if you work on these over time the quality of your work will be much better than if you prioritised these over the urgent tasks, and what follows is as I said before all leisure.
So in short to prevent a lack of self motivation and time management, one must have a clear grasp of goals and ideals and prioritise and balance the work that is needed to achieve them, it's no use going all out with work as it can lead to burnout, if you are aware of such things it can prevent wasting time and procrastination as you'll have a better grasp and control over the time you spend towards your goals.
Tuesday, 12 January 2010
Sunday, 18 October 2009
Rawr
Its been a while since I posted a blog, dear god why have I neglected this for so long D:, maybe I should spend less time on DA! Anyway thought I'd come back with something I think worth writing about, the artist I did for the master artist study set by Chris. For the good part of the week I was really stumped on who to actually study, ashamedly I don't really have an artist I look up to, I mean I admire many artists but not one has actually stuck with me, at least not in a way I would idolise them. So yeah it was difficult who to choose, but then Mike's talk on thursday came along and I was reunited with an old friend, Paul Cézanne, an artist who I would always use to fall back on when I had to do an artist study in my sketchbook, admittedly to this day I still know very little about the man's personal life but I sure as heck love the way he painted.
He has such a loose style, its detailed but his art tends to insinuate detail even if he doesn't have to draw it in complete and utter detail, its something I love because of the raw emotion that seems to come from his art, it could just be me but seeing an artist's brush strokes is like imagining the painter's arm movements, but yeah its hard for me to explain these kind of things but in short his style his win in my book.
Now in regards to the style, it is no easy thing to emulate, especially on a computer program, I tried on different programs, Sai and photoshop and well they felt ill equipped to deal with it, hence why I started up painter for the first time in a year, and its where I found the perfect utensils to recreate this piece.
It was still tough however as I couldn't recreate the texture that this piece had, so I did the best I could and came up with this, its a bit wonky and what not, but I'm pleased with how it turned out.
He has such a loose style, its detailed but his art tends to insinuate detail even if he doesn't have to draw it in complete and utter detail, its something I love because of the raw emotion that seems to come from his art, it could just be me but seeing an artist's brush strokes is like imagining the painter's arm movements, but yeah its hard for me to explain these kind of things but in short his style his win in my book.
Now in regards to the style, it is no easy thing to emulate, especially on a computer program, I tried on different programs, Sai and photoshop and well they felt ill equipped to deal with it, hence why I started up painter for the first time in a year, and its where I found the perfect utensils to recreate this piece.
It was still tough however as I couldn't recreate the texture that this piece had, so I did the best I could and came up with this, its a bit wonky and what not, but I'm pleased with how it turned out.
Monday, 30 March 2009
THIS IS WHO WE ARE!!!!!
Liberal arts education, to me , it pretty much seems like what I’ve been doing since I was a young’un, it’s what most of us have been doing in the education system, being taught a range of subjects to prepare us for the real world. Now it’s all good and well with the idea that if you know everything you can do everything, but for me going through such a system I felt somewhat lacking a course of direction, I had no idea what I wanted to be, it just made me go, “Whatever happens, happens”.
Although enough of that, that’s for a later entry and in no way, am I bashing liberal arts, as confused as I was, it does pretty well and offers people a wide range of skills, especially in intellectual aspects, which sort of supports the idea of companies wanting creative individuals with a good liberal art background. It can mean that the people who have been through liberal arts have been exposed to much more than a normal art student, they are influenced by a wide variety of ideas and are probably quite good at analytical thinking, a good trait to have considering problem solving is a key aspect that I have found in most job applications in the industry. But this just means that they’re guaranteed to be somewhat employable, the real key is that the person meets the job requirements, and more than often those requirements are: Drive, passion, team player, problem solver and ability to work with deadlines.
Aspects which not necessarily can just be achieved in a liberal arts college, take our course for example, a straight forward specialised course, here we are learning all those aspects because we are aiming to get into the game industry. We learn to work in teams in our second year, our problem solving is developed through how we work through pieces and of course the deadly 3dsmax, and our drive and passion is apparent, considering we’re on the course and still at it.
So in conclusion I believe that both are valid, I mean of course companies would want the best, and well having a liberal arts would be indeed a great bit of leverage, but the idea that they want well trained is just as valid as we and graduates of the course are proof that even though we lack say the philosophy of Socrates, or the mathematical genius of Ms (insert teacher name) by the time we enter the industry we’ll have those qualities. So in the end is pretty much up to the individual and how they present themselves to the companies.
Although enough of that, that’s for a later entry and in no way, am I bashing liberal arts, as confused as I was, it does pretty well and offers people a wide range of skills, especially in intellectual aspects, which sort of supports the idea of companies wanting creative individuals with a good liberal art background. It can mean that the people who have been through liberal arts have been exposed to much more than a normal art student, they are influenced by a wide variety of ideas and are probably quite good at analytical thinking, a good trait to have considering problem solving is a key aspect that I have found in most job applications in the industry. But this just means that they’re guaranteed to be somewhat employable, the real key is that the person meets the job requirements, and more than often those requirements are: Drive, passion, team player, problem solver and ability to work with deadlines.
Aspects which not necessarily can just be achieved in a liberal arts college, take our course for example, a straight forward specialised course, here we are learning all those aspects because we are aiming to get into the game industry. We learn to work in teams in our second year, our problem solving is developed through how we work through pieces and of course the deadly 3dsmax, and our drive and passion is apparent, considering we’re on the course and still at it.
So in conclusion I believe that both are valid, I mean of course companies would want the best, and well having a liberal arts would be indeed a great bit of leverage, but the idea that they want well trained is just as valid as we and graduates of the course are proof that even though we lack say the philosophy of Socrates, or the mathematical genius of Ms (insert teacher name) by the time we enter the industry we’ll have those qualities. So in the end is pretty much up to the individual and how they present themselves to the companies.
The sound of moosic
Sound is used in the same way as it is in tv shows and films in games, you have your diegetic sounds for environments such as birds chirping in the forest or the clangy pipe in the engine room. As well as that music tracks are used in a way to build suspense and drive action in a way similar to films which use music to build up, say the evil killer hiding round the corner. Music has been a staple aspect of the gaming industry with games like Mario and Sonic having music from their games immortalised in pop culture. They have become a sort of trademark of each series, and while I wouldn’t say game music is iconic as it was back in the day, it still gives games their own unique feel.
In series’, music is often remixed or uses a band contracted to the company, two examples of this include Final Fantasy, and we all know the victory theme, mainly because it has been in use since the very first game and has just been remixed.
The other example is sonic the hedgehog series, while i must say the quality has been decreasing, the music always seems do well, most of the games in the latest generations use the band Crush 40 an in house band at sega, and have a unique style which can be used to familiarise with modern sonic games.
I have to say the key sonic moments in my gaming history, well most of which are from sonic games, an apparent one would be the finale of sonic adventure 2 on the dreamcast, hearing the main theme blasting through my speakers as I dash at a giant space ship monster in space is a thing of beauty.
Actually most of my favourite music moments are sonic endings , here’s another of my faves. The part I really like is at 1:49
As for good times, I honestly have no idea, atm while I listen to it I think of GmTV, which reminds me I need food......
In series’, music is often remixed or uses a band contracted to the company, two examples of this include Final Fantasy, and we all know the victory theme, mainly because it has been in use since the very first game and has just been remixed.
The other example is sonic the hedgehog series, while i must say the quality has been decreasing, the music always seems do well, most of the games in the latest generations use the band Crush 40 an in house band at sega, and have a unique style which can be used to familiarise with modern sonic games.
I have to say the key sonic moments in my gaming history, well most of which are from sonic games, an apparent one would be the finale of sonic adventure 2 on the dreamcast, hearing the main theme blasting through my speakers as I dash at a giant space ship monster in space is a thing of beauty.
Actually most of my favourite music moments are sonic endings , here’s another of my faves. The part I really like is at 1:49
Instrumentals really do hit home for me sometimes
As for good times, I honestly have no idea, atm while I listen to it I think of GmTV, which reminds me I need food......
Choo Choo
Game engines are something, up till now, I was vaguely knowledgeable about, I understood that they run the games and that they allow us to see all the pretty graphics , hear all the serene sounds etc and of course play the game. But in technical terms, bear with me while I quote wikipedia, “A game engine is a software system designed for the creation and development of video games, the core functionality typically provided by a game engine includes a rendering engine (“renderer”) for 2D or 3D graphics, a physics engine or collision detection (and collision response), sound, scripting, animation, artificial intelligence, networking, streaming, memory management, threading, and a scene graph”. Basically the game engines are like string in clothing, it holds all the pieces together and puts them to use.
The key gaming engines that I’m aware of are The Unreal Engine and The havoc engine, the Unreal being the most used engine because of how versatile it is in being used for different gaming platforms and the ease it takes to modify gameplay and other aspects thanks to the unrealscript and the developers tools packaged with the engine. The Havok engine on the other hand is a physics engine and allows for almost realistic physics by allowing interaction between objects and or other characters in real time and by giving objects physics based qualities in 3D. The two engines are used widely, mainly due to how cost effective it can be to develop from readymade engines than making one from scratch as well as that it can greatly cut down on development time.
Of course though they aren’t the only engines around, some companies have ended up using their own inhouse built game engines. Such games include Dark sector with its evolution engine and Sonic unleashed using the hedgehog engine. The latter shows the advantages of having inhouse technology, the hedgehog engine is a new lighting engine developed to provide much more realistic lighting, it does this by calculating not just the normal aspects of a lighting engine is expected to do but coloured lightmaps for light filtering through transparent objects and reflecting off the world. In a presentation by sega, they were showing off development tools, showing that they may release the engine into third party licensing. Here Sega have a valuable asset at their disposable which they can keep exclusive amping up the company’s repertoire or as I assume they will be doing putting it up for third party licensing, the latter meaning they gain a profit from its use in other games.
However the real problem now lies in next gen gaming, as games become much more detailed and realistic, using proprietary engines might not be the best route as new games may need specific engines to work, thus fuelling the need for in house technology.
The key gaming engines that I’m aware of are The Unreal Engine and The havoc engine, the Unreal being the most used engine because of how versatile it is in being used for different gaming platforms and the ease it takes to modify gameplay and other aspects thanks to the unrealscript and the developers tools packaged with the engine. The Havok engine on the other hand is a physics engine and allows for almost realistic physics by allowing interaction between objects and or other characters in real time and by giving objects physics based qualities in 3D. The two engines are used widely, mainly due to how cost effective it can be to develop from readymade engines than making one from scratch as well as that it can greatly cut down on development time.
"The engine gods"
Of course though they aren’t the only engines around, some companies have ended up using their own inhouse built game engines. Such games include Dark sector with its evolution engine and Sonic unleashed using the hedgehog engine. The latter shows the advantages of having inhouse technology, the hedgehog engine is a new lighting engine developed to provide much more realistic lighting, it does this by calculating not just the normal aspects of a lighting engine is expected to do but coloured lightmaps for light filtering through transparent objects and reflecting off the world. In a presentation by sega, they were showing off development tools, showing that they may release the engine into third party licensing. Here Sega have a valuable asset at their disposable which they can keep exclusive amping up the company’s repertoire or as I assume they will be doing putting it up for third party licensing, the latter meaning they gain a profit from its use in other games.
"why so blue?"
However the real problem now lies in next gen gaming, as games become much more detailed and realistic, using proprietary engines might not be the best route as new games may need specific engines to work, thus fuelling the need for in house technology.
Sunday, 15 March 2009
In this worllllld~
I think of myself as someone who is quite well versed in the ways of gaming culture, despite having never played an online pc game which is what most of it seemed to originate from, in fact actually I’m quite ill-informed of the whole darn thing, perhaps it’s because I often get it mixed up with internet culture, anyway enough of that, on to the fantastical world of gaming culture.
The ever eternal image of gamers being in dark, dark rooms playing their war craft is still an apparent image in today’s world, however in truth the gaming culture has changed tenfold, heck it’s nowhere as geeky as it once was. The gaming culture has become a much more widespread phenomenon as gaming has become more main stream, gaming icons have become pop icons, Mario and sonic being the main contenders appearing on shirts at top shop, who would have ever thought it?! It’s also become a much more social past time; while I have never met anyone and stayed in contact with them on an online game, I’ve heard of people who have made great friendships with people they’ve met over Xbox live or counter strike and in some cases even find their soul mate.
I have however found myself engulfed in the Online Sonic culture, as some may know I’m a sonic fan and when meeting likeminded people online I sort of got sucked into the whole thing. And I must say it does encompass a large part of my life, while not obsessive I have an extensive list of people on MSN who I have met through sonic websites and some just randomly met on other forums, which while I have never met in my life (well except for a few when I went to a con) are all a joy to talk to. Of course in a non-stalkerish way I’d one day want to meet these people in person, especially since it gives me an excuse to go on a round the world tour for something other than sightseeing.
The ever eternal image of gamers being in dark, dark rooms playing their war craft is still an apparent image in today’s world, however in truth the gaming culture has changed tenfold, heck it’s nowhere as geeky as it once was. The gaming culture has become a much more widespread phenomenon as gaming has become more main stream, gaming icons have become pop icons, Mario and sonic being the main contenders appearing on shirts at top shop, who would have ever thought it?! It’s also become a much more social past time; while I have never met anyone and stayed in contact with them on an online game, I’ve heard of people who have made great friendships with people they’ve met over Xbox live or counter strike and in some cases even find their soul mate.
I have however found myself engulfed in the Online Sonic culture, as some may know I’m a sonic fan and when meeting likeminded people online I sort of got sucked into the whole thing. And I must say it does encompass a large part of my life, while not obsessive I have an extensive list of people on MSN who I have met through sonic websites and some just randomly met on other forums, which while I have never met in my life (well except for a few when I went to a con) are all a joy to talk to. Of course in a non-stalkerish way I’d one day want to meet these people in person, especially since it gives me an excuse to go on a round the world tour for something other than sightseeing.
Summer of Sonic 08 pic of smallish concert with Richard jaques and Bentley jones. See if you can spot me in the pic ;D
THE INDUSTRY!!!!
I often look into my pocket and find some random notes I completely forget about, and then I immediately think of the recession, only briefly mind as I end up going to the market to buy a cheapass game.
Of course while I’m buying the game, the recession is having a serious impact on the gaming industry these days, more than often have I overheard stories of the third years being worried about going into the industry at such an unstable time, and so they should be, as companies have been dropping employees left right and centre as well as a fair few reputable companies going under.
Companies such as Sony and Microsoft have laid of hundreds and Free Radical, made famous for their Time splitters series were closed suddenly due to the credit crunch meaning more lost jobs. This entire situation has now led to a much more competitive industry for people like us, with more jobs being lost it means more people are returning to the job pool and are a hell of a lot more experienced than us. This may sound very daunting yet it is true, we are in drastic times people and only the best shall come out!!
But seriously it puts this course into perspective, I now truly understand why the course is structured in such a way, it’s to give us the best push into the industry. Not only does it develop our creative skill set but it also allows us to develop as creative thinkers, not just through the art but in the form of these blog tasks, which I think will be a great help indeed especially when talking with co-workers in the industry, as in one website I read said, it’s always good to have connections, if not for the social aspect, having a friendly face in a company you are trying to get work in is both a comforting feeling and an amazing advantage.
Of course while I’m buying the game, the recession is having a serious impact on the gaming industry these days, more than often have I overheard stories of the third years being worried about going into the industry at such an unstable time, and so they should be, as companies have been dropping employees left right and centre as well as a fair few reputable companies going under.
Companies such as Sony and Microsoft have laid of hundreds and Free Radical, made famous for their Time splitters series were closed suddenly due to the credit crunch meaning more lost jobs. This entire situation has now led to a much more competitive industry for people like us, with more jobs being lost it means more people are returning to the job pool and are a hell of a lot more experienced than us. This may sound very daunting yet it is true, we are in drastic times people and only the best shall come out!!
But seriously it puts this course into perspective, I now truly understand why the course is structured in such a way, it’s to give us the best push into the industry. Not only does it develop our creative skill set but it also allows us to develop as creative thinkers, not just through the art but in the form of these blog tasks, which I think will be a great help indeed especially when talking with co-workers in the industry, as in one website I read said, it’s always good to have connections, if not for the social aspect, having a friendly face in a company you are trying to get work in is both a comforting feeling and an amazing advantage.
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