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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This is it. The end of the year. Time to say goodbye to high school. So I'm not sure that I have time to really get into the sappy stuff properly in this post, so instead, I'm just gonna talk about my main takeaways from this class.
1. Anxiety Ok, yeah, this one is a little unfair, because I definitely had anxiety before this class, but let's just say, those photoshop and illustrator quizzes in 9th grade? They taught me what real panic is. But what I really mean by this is that this class has shown me a new kind of anxiety that I'm going to be very familiar with assuming my career goes as planned: anxiety over meeting deadlines of creative projects. And for this, I'm really grateful, because if I hadn't experienced it for the past four years, it would hit me like a ton of bricks in college. Also, providing these stressful situations has allowed me to see my improved anxiety management as I've gotten progressively more on top of projects and less worried about perfection. GAD has honestly been one of maybe three major things in my life that have helped me with anxiety. 2. Mad Skillz When I started out in GAD, I had used blender in a summer camp, but I had never touched ANY sort of programming (other than maybe one day of code class,) any of the programs we use like 3DsMax and Photoshop, or even really thought about what it truly takes to make a game. To have gone from essentially nothing to working in VR in 4 years (especially those years being highschool) honestly is a little wild to me. I don't really think of myself as very skilled since I still have so much to learn, but actually I have developed so many skills in this class that i may not have even tried to learn if not for GAD. Not all of them are skills I will definitely use, but the majority are, and most of the rest are ones I would love to continue using, even just as a hobby. I like being able to make digital art, 3D model, sound design, edit my own videos, manage my projects, and program things, and because of GAD, I can, at some level, do all of these things, and I know where to find other resources online to learn more. 3. Friendship This one is a bit sarcastic but also in another sense very genuine. I don't know if we, the advanced studies kids, will actually stay in touch after high school, but I can say it was really great to work on a team, and it taught me a lot about working with other to create collaboratively. So, it's sarcastic in the sense that, I may or may not take my current friendships with me, but I will take the people skills that I've learned here with me, and that will help me both in professional settings and casual ones. I started out high school being very quiet, not really fully believing that anyone would want to be my friend, and GAD in part has helped me in being a space where I can belong as part of the team, which does wonders for a kid's self esteem. I feel much more confident presenting my ideas to others and knowing that what I'm saying is worth others hearing, and that didn't come from teacher praise, it really came from the unique environment that GAD creates in having such a tight knit community of peers who are, for the most part, incredibly supportive. Overall, I'll glad I was in the Game Art and Design pathway. I had my regrets in the middle for sure, but getting to create on a team this year has been so gratifying, and I really think the class has dramatically changed me as a person and helped me figure out what I want to do with my life. If you made it this far, thanks, Mr. B. So turns out the pig is big time goofin' so looks like I have some more work to do with him. He did not transfer over to Sam's computer very well at all, many things were scaled and placed weirdly. So step one is fixing that. However, I did spend this week playing around with textures for the pig's skin. Unfortunately, our computers do not have Unity, so I am unable to currently test those textures out. (Again, Photoshop will not work for this purpose because it tries to texture every single face of the object as having the same texture.) I haven't yet made the textures tileable either, because I want to see which one I like on the model the most before doing all of that work. However, I don't think texturing will be much of an issue, I am more concerned about the export issue. This is the end of the quarter though, so I have to get moving on to modeling classroom assets. I also need to make sure that I have a plan to finish everything within the next 9 weeks so that we are able to actually finish the entire game in time.
Goals For Next Week:
This August, I broke my arm. More specifically, my wrist on my dominant hand while I was roller skating with some friends and I fell. As someone pursuing animation, you can see where this would cause problems. This was at a really inopportune time for me too because I was planning on creating a comic with over 200 panels by mid September for a contest I had no chance of winning, but that I still wanted to meet the deadline for. That idea was immediately crushed (although I do hope to come back to it once college apps are over and I actually have free time again). Speaking of college apps, I am trying to get into art programs for college, and breaking my arm horrified me because I had just come back from an art intensive and I was ready to make amazing stuff for portfolios. This injury didn't allow me to make much art, and what I did make looked something like this: Just this picture took me almost an hour, I was using a brush stabilizer to make my lines more smooth, and I was really trying just to make something, so I wasn't really employing a lot of design principles. With more time and more planning, I might have been able to make something slightly better, but it would have taken a lot of effort and still not produced work that I was really happy with. So what did I do instead? I took a break. My life became consumed by D&D (which did force me to do a little bit of drawing in terms of making maps and such, but overall, I was not making visual art nearly as much as I normally do.) I could have been working in 3Ds Max a bit more if I wanted to still make art, but I think at that point, I really needed the break. 3D art would just remind me that I couldn't draw 2D art, because at the time, I wanted to do a mixed media project that combines both (which is currently in the works. Stay tuned...) So D&D, world-building and designing my own game, as well as listening to other people's content became my main hobby, and since it was summer and with a broken arm I couldn't do much else, it became most of my life.
And it was great. It took away any feelings of being burnt out and got me excited to create again once I could use my wrist. I listened to The Adventure Zone, a popular D&D actual play podcast and it made me laugh and cry so much, and that really motivated me to keep working on storytelling because it reminded me of how powerful that can really be. I think having this break was tough for me, and did set me back a little while in terms of artistic improvement and assembling a portfolio, but in the end, it's something I've very grateful for because it helped me refocus. So my brother just logged into our shared youtube account for the first time in nearly a year. This account was never something serious in the least, it was a place for us to make terrible edits of media to make bad jokes (known as YouTube Poops). Super cringey, super bad editing skills, nothing really original to speak of (but still within fair use I believe). Still, creating these terrible cringey videos, which now have thousands of views (who knows how?) was one of the best things I ever did.
Goofing around in artistic fields is pretty much the best way to improve at first. Of course later on you would want to do more structured and strategic learning, like actually focusing on specific techniques and everything. However, to start, just goofing around is great. When we first got our video editing software, my brother and my cousin and I had tried to make "more serious" videos before, and I got very perfectionistic, controlling, and frustrated. After taking a break, my brother proposed the idea of making these types of edit videos instead, and it was a great change. If something looked bad, it was okay. The videos were never meant to be perfect, just fun. And this got me over my fear of mistakes or not always making something flawless. Now, I've returned to actual original content making with videos - though I wouldn't say it's more serious - and my editing skills have definitely improved. I edit videos that my brother and his friend make together, and it's much more enjoyable, and since I learned so much about the software when making those goofy videos before, plus the editing education I got from class, I now feel a lot more qualified to edit videos. Yes, maybe I don't have any videos I would be proud to show on a portfolio, but I now have the skills that I need in order to start making work that would be higher quality. This idea applies to more areas of art than just videos though. Personally, I experience burnout and loss of motivation quite a bit right now in my life, and making art that is more silly or just plain weird usually helps me since it breaks me out of the monotony of constantly trying to produce perfection that others will view. Also, it can help you get over that frustration in first learning since if your art is supposed to be silly, you're less worried about whether or not it's very good. A lot of people stop drawing because they feel that they aren't as good as those around them, or aren't improving fast enough, and I think I may have done the same with video editing had it not been for goofing around with my brother. Again though, making completely silly art all the time is highly unlikely to ever make you great, but it is a good first step. After that I do agree that more formal tutorials and training are what help you hone your skills, so after starting with goofy stuff, it is good to transition into actual learning. I think I want to try to find a bit more of a balance where I learn to incorporate smaller silly elements into my work while still making something original and artful. This could be things like practicing character poses but putting the characters into silly costumes, or adding a dog into a piece, but overall I just want to find the balance between fun and still learning important skills. This is an older game, but I played it for the first time recently, and since it's slated to get a sequel this year, I decided, why not. Full disclosure, I have not yet completed the game, but I feel that I've played enough of it to make an initial review - but maybe if I have time this summer I will follow this up with a post reflecting on the end. Rad. That's the one word I would use to describe this game. The music is this really cool loop that, even after playing the game for quite a while, I never got tired of, and I would totally recommend listening to for fun. The characters have a little dialogue at the beginning, and it's very simple, but also adds a lot of charm to the game because the characters are very lovable and give off a very Spongebob and Squidward but if they were bffs kind of vibe. The art is not what I would consider very good, but considering the console the game is for - the sega genesis - it's not terrible. Despite my claims that it's not great art, I absolutely love it. Yes it's kind of bad, but it seems like that's the look they were going for and they executed it really well. Just look, and read the text next to the health bars: This game doesn't take itself too seriously artistically and that results in some great, goofy dialogue, some fun music, and a really unique visual style.
As for the gameplay itself, you're aliens stranded on Earth trying to get home. This Earth is set up in layers, and you have to explore the map to find an elevator to get up a level. You can also be killed by drowning or hazards, or just have your progress slowed by being pushed off of the edge of a level down to a lower one. Along the way you can find friendly NPCs as well as power ups that are shaped like presents, and telephones that will reveal some of the map. The game is, at least because of the chaos, challenging, but also really unique and pretty enjoyable. When you first play the game, you aren't given any sort of tutorial, but this is actually something beautiful. It fits completely with the story of being stuck on a planet that you know nothing about. You aren't exactly sure who or what is a hazard or a helper, you really have to explore to see. Even the powerups have unknown abilities, and you have to use one in order to figure out what that kind of present does, which can be good - healing you completely or letting you fly - or terrible - a lightning cloud that kills you instantly. Once you've tried a present of that kind, it becomes labelled from then on, so it really feels like you're in a new world just trying to make sense of everything. For the most part, the game is also very forgiving to allow for this sort of experimentation, which is very nice. Overall, I think I appreciate this game more than most people since especially nowadays we want games that are a little more intuitive. It also really lacks much substance in its storyline, so I could see that as another criticism. However, I really love it for just being such a goofball of a game and having such a unique feeling to it. It's really inspired me to try to make more art that is less serious while still being honest and reflecting real life feelings like confusion, even in such a silly way. This is a blog post about blog posts (super meta right?) So, why am I talking about this? Well, recently I've come to resent doing blog posts, despite the fact that I love writing and haven't minded writing them in the past. I'm sure the past few posts I've made have been incredibly boring to read: they've been uninspired and feel more like a boring task than a learning opportunity. My blogging lately has sucked.
So what am I going to do to improve? I think the general writing style that I have is fine, but there is one major change I want to make: shorter blog posts. I recently saw another blog that inspired me because of how short he was able to make his posts and still get the point across. I need to work on being more concise in my ideas. This doesn't mean putting in any less effort, because now I'll have to focus more on summarizing, which also means focusing on stronger comprehension since in order to adequately summarize, I have to fully understand what we're learning about, as well as understand the external sources I find thoroughly. Though it seems like a very small thing, I think overall it will help me actually learn from blog posts, keep me more interested in blogging since I am changing up the style a bit, and make my blog posts a little more approachable. We just finished our audio editing unit in class, and will soon be moving into video. So, I wanted to take some time to reflect on the audio unit and see how the skills we've learned there will help as we move into video, and that's what this post will be about.
I can't say that I felt that I learned a lot of new material this unit, but it certainly did give me a lot of much needed practice with audio, because you need a lot of practice to be good at it even though it seems simple enough. Though I definitely still need more practice, I think I got much better at timing, which is incredibly important. This article lists other tips and tricks, and I think that these assignments really did help me get the hang of how to use different tools and methods, many of which are listed in the article. It also emphasizes understanding how different effects on the audio clips affect each other. I definitely had to pay attention to that, especially while working on the audio book project, so I think that the practice was very valuable. Now the question is, how valuable will it be moving into the video unit? Obviously the two are very closely related as seen in the abbreviation A/V. This article on common mistakes in video editing makes it seem like many of the basic principles are the same. It emphasizes finding cohesiveness, focusing on transitions, and trying to keep things as clean and clear as possible. In fact, two of the tips are even focused on audio. However, this also raises the point that in video editing you have to focus on two different sense coming together. You're still very focused on the audio, but now it also has to match a picture on the screen rather than just the picture in your audience's brains. This makes timing again incredibly important, as well as cohesiveness. Basically though it just seems like adding another layer on top of what we just learned, so I think in the end audio editing principles will be very valuable in this next unit.
So we have just one week left to finish our 2D games based on the Durham Community. To say it's going to be stressful is an understatement, and this is not because of my group members or anything (they're amazing), it just takes a lot of work to make games. So, in this post, I want to reflect on how we've done so far in production, as well as see if there are things people in the industry do during crunch time that could help us, or if it's too late for us now and this will just have to be a learning experience.
First, the timeline provided by our teacher was simply this: have a playable prototype by the end of 4 weeks. Of course we have many other goals he set for us to reach, but he did not make them time specific; they just need to get done to create the game. He also suggested that we leave the final Friday for testing for bugs (meaning we have the prototype mostly up and ready to go by Thursday). The rest was up to us. So far, it's just been a frenzy of completing different assets, meaning that this week we have to finish all of those as well as put them all together in a cohesive game. I think this was definitely my first mistake. I left our schedule sort of fluid rather than setting strict deadlines. Even if we hadn't completely met the deadlines, having them would have kept us more on track I think, and would have helped to make this week easier. Now for the week ahead, because I can't go back and change my mistakes from the past. Obviously, being high school student, our crunch time won't be nearly as extreme as that for industry professionals, but I wanted to see how they handle the stress. According to the start of this article the answer seems to be, not well. However, it also explains that even with good scheduling, crunch time can still be a problem if any issues come up towards the end of development. This is bad news for us since we will likely have some problems as we put stuff together this week. It also says that you should know by the time you have 2 weeks left whether or not you'll be able to finish your game. But then, the article even says, "it’s very difficult to figure out how long it might take to finish a given task." Since this is our first time really producing a game on a team like this, our judgement may not be good enough to do this accurately, but it is a good idea to make this sort of check on whether or not you think you can make it every week at team meetings, so I think I will begin doing that if I am ever production manager again. The article towards the end says that crunching for more than 2 weeks is ineffective and you won't make it, instead you have to cut things. I think for our game it may be beneficial to cut a few things (for instance, the enemies, which we knew we were probably going to have to cut). We will only be crunching for 1 week though, so maybe our work will pay off a little, but at the same time there's only so much work we can do in a week. The whole purpose of this article was to sway you from supporting crunch time, and it was pretty successful, I am worried about this week. However another article strives to give tips on surviving this stressful work time (though it does reiterate that crunch time is bad). Many of the tips are things like "take breaks" which are less applicable to us since we have the rest of the school day to be working on other things, but some of the tips are helpful. It suggests heavy scheduling, communication of expectations, and being okay with failure in some aspects. I think at Monday's team meeting I definitely need to discuss all of these things with my group, especially working hard to set up a firm schedule so that we can get as much quality work done as possible.
Since the school year is just getting started and I'm a pretty goal oriented person, I thought I should set up some goals for my art for this year. This could be projects, techniques, or other things. Basically, they're just artistic things that I want to accomplish or try to accomplish over the year. So, here's my five main goals right now:
1. Create an animated short film. By short film, I'm not talking end-of-year college thesis film, but just a short animated piece that's maybe 10 seconds long, but has a clear beginning, middle, and end. Or, a longer film that's just sketched out roughly, but tells a story through animation. I just really want to get some practice at this and see if it's something I enjoy doing. This is going to take a lot of time and effort though. 2. Fill my current sketchbook. I started a new sketchbook towards the end of this summer, and I'm hoping that I can practice in it enough to finish it at least by the end of the school year. I'm not very far in this goal yet either, but I think it is definitely an achievable goal, and will force me to put in a lot of practice. 3. Experiment more with line and create smoother lines. I found recently that I really enjoy working with line variation, and I want to continue playing around with this throughout the year. Also, while this isn't as much of a problem in pencil, when I use pen or digital art forms, my lines get very wobbly. I want to practice drawing nicer, smoother lines. A lot of this will just come with practice and trying new things. 4. Move away from just drawing people. While I have started moving away from just drawing busts of people, I want to move away from people in general and broaden out into other subjects, like animals, bugs, and objects. Of course I know I will still draw people a lot since I want to go into character animation and still have a lot to learn about anatomy, but I want to be able to draw other things as well since people don't exist in a void. 5. Have more fun with art. My art turns out a lot better when I'm having fun, so even though this isn't an incredibly concrete goal, this is something that I really want to work towards. Art is something to learn, but making mistakes along the way is okay, and if I can be less anxious about mistakes, everything will turn out a lot better. |
AuthorHi, I'm Abi, a DSA student who likes games, drawing, writing, and acting. Archives
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