The GAD Pathway I want to start off by saying, in the end, I loved the Game Art and Design pathway. There were rough patches where this class stressed me out more than anything in my life and I almost wished I had dropped it, but there were also beautiful moments of collaboration and self-improvement. I would not be where I am today as a digital artist, have any experience coding, or probably even know what I want to do with my life if it wasn’t for this class. That being said, I honestly have no idea how this class has prepared me for the industry, and I don’t think I will know until I get into the industry. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was great preparation, but I also wouldn’t be surprised if I was blindsided by a lot of things in a real life game design career, whether that’s volume of work, how work is actually split up, or whatever. Obviously, it’s very difficult in a classroom setting to prepare students for the real world, especially one as hectic as the game design industry, so any preparation is better than where I started with zero idea of what the game industry was like at all and with no experience in any similar scenarios. I definitely do have a better picture of what a career in the industry might look like (even if that picture is still a little blurry) and a much better idea of how interdisciplinary the whole process is, and why it’s good to be a bit of a jack of all trades in terms of the skills that you can bring to the table, even if you play a very specialized role. However, I think it would be beneficial to hear more from young game designers just getting into the industry about what they were surprised by after going into the industry after school, that sort of thing would help me understand the industry a bit better (we did have some guests, but they talked more about what life is like once you’re in the industry, not the transition from learning to working). In terms of skills though, this class has been incredibly helpful for me. I was amazed looking back through old work at just how many skills we learned in just the first year (photoshop, 3D modeling and texturing, making a board game, it’s a lot!) and how much we’ve improved since then. I learned a lot about principles of design through the infographics (even if they did feel very tedious after a while,) got better at drawing from 2D art assignments (especially the one over spring break where we had to follow traditional drawing tutorials in our sketch book in GAD), learned so much in 3Ds Max, and got my first real coding experience in Unity. There were also smaller skills like audio and video editing which I had had some experience with, but they were definitely skills that these classes helped me hone. Then there were also some more abstract skills, like how to manage my time, how to work on a team, how to not stress out over an assignment to the point where I am cursing under my breath for the whole class because I am so worried about failing this photoshop test where we have to recreate an image and I haven’t learned any of the keyboard shortcuts yet and how the heck do you make a star with the shape tool!? (Yeah, 9th grade Abi did not know how to deal with anxiety…) All jokes aside though, these more abstract skills are just as important as the concrete ones. I’ve been able to complete a lot of bigger personal projects because of my newfound organizational skills and planning abilities. I wouldn’t say any of the skills that I learned have been unhelpful or a waste of my time (except for how to use Chronozoom, RIP). However, one thing that I really did not like was a lot of the reading that we had to do for this class (I’m talking random articles and The Art of Game Design). I feel like a lot of it was irrelevant to our work in class, and just tedious, and didn’t deliver the information well. Yes, it’s important to know about target audiences, but it was so much more effective to teach about that when we pitched our game ideas, as we can see through experience and learn. I know that Mr. B does not like lectures, but I find a lecture from a fun teacher much more engaging than a book or article. Now, there can be fun articles, and some of the ones that we read were really cool, but overall, I just didn’t get a lot out of the reading material for this course. In the same vein, I feel like doing research into careers in the earlier years of this course wasn’t the best for me personally. I feel like if this lesson had come later, I may have had a clearer idea of what I wanted to do and could have focused in a bit more. However, I do really appreciate the idea of trying to show kids that there are lots of opportunities, so maybe I just would have wanted to revisit the subject in a mini-lesson in later years, but still keep the majority of the lesson early on in the GAD pathway. Luckily, one of the cool things about this class being on computers is that if you want more knowledge on a subject, google is your best friend and will help you learn more about anything. For this reason, I don’t really feel like there were any topics I needed to spend more time on in class because I could always google something if I didn’t understand, wanted it delivered to me in a different medium, or was just curious about learning more. I just hope that most kids are resourceful enough to do so when they want to learn more, otherwise, I’d say more time needs to be spent on understanding coding, because that took me some time and resources to figure out. Advanced Studies Our project this year was creating a 3D model of our school and creating a virtual reality non-violent horror game with the model of the school as the map. I modeled and textured some objects and simplified models so that the game would not be too laggy. It was definitely a struggle sometimes. We had a lot of issues with file format, transferring files, and programs updating so files didn’t work anymore. This was solved through the use of a flash drive, redoing work, and communicating about what files formats would probably work best, as well as just through some trial and error. I personally had some issues in trying to figure out how to work efficiently (not deleting unnecessary vertices one by one) without losing the quality of the original model (the automated vertex merger would sometimes make things look a little funky). Overall, I solved this by using a combination of the two methods, and I feel like, for the most part, I was able to effectively simplify the models without overly distorting them.
The thing I am most proud of with this project is just the amount that we were able to get done. We had a functioning game (for the most part) and a whole building of the school modeled (for the most part). While we had had some big dreams in the beginning and would have ideally liked to accomplish more, for 4 high school kids we did a pretty great job getting done as much work as we did and bringing 4 different people’s work altogether in one game. This project taught me a lot about time management, working on a team, and how to not be a complete perfectionist and still be proud of my work. In terms of technical skills, I got much more familiar with Trello, and learned some new 3D modelling tricks. I think in anything I do in a group setting now, I will be able to communicate with others a lot better. I feel like I have improved at knowing how to praise and respect other people’s work while still being able to address any flaws that need to be addressed, and how to ask people to get things done by a deadline. As for the perfectionist part, our game was not perfect whatsoever, and past me would have been incredibly bothered, but current me couldn’t be happier with our game. It was never supposed to be perfect and never will be, games, and experiences in general, rarely are. They’re always works in progresses, or pieces of art with something that could be improved, and this project has helped me not only accept, but appreciate that. I didn’t learn as much about my independent work this year (though I have from all other years of GAD) but in a way, I did learn how I function as an individual in a group, and how that has changed from the last group project we had in AGAD at the beginning to the year. I do feel much more confident working either independently or in a group now though, I feel like my work is useful and like I can actually produce amazing things. My biggest takeaway from CTE Advanced Studies personally is just that I, with a group of people can do things. This may sounds like a lame take away, but it’s really not for me. This year really proved to me that I have what it takes to accomplish things, maybe not on my own, but I can certainly contribute to big projects in meaningful ways. Before this year, all of the assignments in my Game Art Design classes had been things I HAD to do. If they didn’t get done, I would have a bad grade, and they were all set out by Mr. B, he expected us to be able to do them. This project was different. Yes, I would have a bad grade if it failed, but it was no longer an assignment that I HAD to do. It was a project that my group WANTED to do. There was no expectation other than that we go for it. It’s no longer “complete these parameters,” it’s “what could we do?” The lack of a “read the rubric,” was incredibly freeing for me and created a space about just experimenting and going for it, and trying to make the most awesome game that we could, and we did it, we really made something that I am genuinely proud of, that I had had no idea whether or not we could realistically create and we did it. I was part of that. We are capable of doing things, not because they are expected of us or because we have to, but just because we have the ability, the willpower, and the passion to do things. I know that’s really cheesy, and sort of rambly, and pretty abstract, but I really am glad for this first opportunity to work in a creative space with others to do something big. It’s what I want to do for the rest of my life, and now I feel like that’s possible for me.
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AuthorHi, I'm Abi, a DSA student who likes games, drawing, writing, and acting. Archives
February 2020
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