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. I've been playing Dungeons & Dragons for almost 5 years now, a few times as a player, but recently only as a Dungeon Master. Since 8th grade when I started playing, it's always been a big part of my life, from being the way I connected with my friends outside of school, to the being the club I go to every other Tuesday, to being a key component in a podcast that means the world to me, to again connecting me with friends. It's helped me develop closer relationships with people, improved my improvising and leadership skills, and has just been really fun. It's also very closely related to game design since it is a game where you get to do a lot of the designing, so I'm going to talk about some things that I've learned from the game. This is the first post, but I hope to make more.
This first lesson is "Who's Playing?" or in other words: Audience is EVERYTHING. Ok so this one might be because I'm a weak little man without a backbone (aka a doormat, a pushover, what have you) but truly, the players that you have can really change the game. A stricter DM may not experience this at all if they try not to be flexible to fit their players needs, but I certainly try (maybe too hard) to be accommodating to the players and the story that they want, so my games do change depending on who is playing them. I especially have been able to see this through running the same (or a similar) campaign twice with two different groups: one composed of my close friends, and the other at tabletop club. My group of close friends are much less combat-oriented than the tabletop group (possibly because they know that I hate running combat) and are more likely to explore and investigate, and MUCH more likely to talk at length with NPCs to ask about what's going on. At tabletop club, intimidation is the name of the game with NPCs, who are often ignored, and no questions are asked as they rush into potentially dangerous areas. This past Tuesday at tabletop was the smoothest combat that I've ever run, and that's because these players are really into it. All (except maybe one) were constantly paying attention to what was going on, and so it moved very quickly. Usually, combat drags on forever and doesn't feel so consequential, but here, they were using high level spells to stay alive, and while some of this can be attributed to me improving as a DM, I also really believe that it's because of who my players were. It's a little bit like how if you throw someone who is bad a videogames into a racing game, they're not going to be able to go very fast - similarly, my friends, who are catching up after being months apart, aren't very good at focusing in on combat. In contrast, the tabletop kids are like pro racers, they have more knowledge of the Official D&D rules than I do, so once their turn rolls around, I don't even have to tell them that it's their turn: they already have their entire move planned and ready to go without any prompting from me. This leads to very different combat scenarios, the first feeling tedious, and the second being a core component of gameplay. I'm not trying to say that the tabletop group's way of playing is better though, I actually typically prefer the way my friends play, as is outlined by the tavern scene. I had set up a tavern with 6 different NPCs who would supply different plot threads so that the players could have a bit of choice in what kind of game they wanted to play (I would develop the overarching storyline based on who they chose to do a quest for). With the tabletop group, after talking to the first guy, they rushed to get a horse and carriage and got outta there! (they went to complete his quest). My group of friends however talked to 4 of the NPCs (we ran out of time in the session to talk to more) and they had a nice scene where they deliberated which quest to follow. It allowed for some good character development, and set them on a path to a quest that they were all interested in. There's nothing wrong with impulsively rushing in, but I personally appreciate careful deliberation as well. Overall, I'm trying to say players choose which direction the story is heading, but also affect the energy of each encounter as well. There's no style of play that is inherently bad, but there may be a style of play that's a better fit for the game you are creating, so you need to take into account who is going to be playing, how they play, and if you can work with that. It's exactly the same with all game designing. If you want to make an FPS, your players are probably not going to appreciate long, unskippable cutscenes, unless you are specifically advertising to an audience that likes both FPS and narrative heavy games. Knowing what kind of game you run, and who your target audience is can really help solidify what challenges and features you create for the game you are making. I don't know when this happened (or it may have just always been there but I never noticed) but Weebly now has an Alt Text feature that allows you to easily write image descriptions on any images on your website! This is very cool, for a couple of reasons.
The first, less important reason, is that if your alt text contains keywords, your image may be found by these keywords, but the normal description doesn't have to include them. It could help images or entire websites get a little bit more exposure. However, what's even better is the second reason: accessibility. Alt text will be read by screen readers, so people who are blind or have any sight problems who use screen readers (programs that will read online text to them) can also understand what is going on in the image. This is something that a lot of people never even think about when creating content, so I am very glad that weebly has brought this technology to an easy to edit place on images (the same place you would click in order to write a regular caption). I learned a lot about this as I've been doing fan art for a podcast, because as a completely auditory medium, there's more hard of seeing people in the audience since it is a media form that is more accessible to them, and so many people in the community have been encouraging more image descriptions. There are people who aren't completely blind who can definitely enjoy visual art, but may just need a little bit of extra description in order to figure out what they're looking at. For instance, telling someone who sees a blob in the middle of the screen, "hey, that's a face!" might clarify it enough for them to be able to see the face you drew, much like how when we look at clouds, if someone suggests what the cloud looks like, it becomes much easier to see. If you include an important image or diagram that is crucial to understanding a blog post, an image description means that there is a better chance that people who have trouble seeing can still follow. It's also helpful if you took a screenshot of some text to transcribe it to alt text, because a screen reader wouldn't be able to read that. Personally, I think, from both a business and humanitarian standpoint, the more people who can enjoy your content, the better, so even if this feature would only help a few people, it's still very worth it to use. Of course, it is a bit more work, but image descriptions should be less than 125 words (this is so that people with screen readers don't have to sit there for a long time as each image is being described) so it shouldn't actually take that long, and it's a really great thing to do. I've been thinking a lot about social media lately. As someone who wants to try to make a career out of being an artist, putting my artwork out there and networking are both super important, but social media can often distract me from work. I thought that it was motivating me to make more art so that I could post more, but I reviewed my entire art account at the start of 2019, and I realized that there were entire months where I didn't make a single art post! Most of my posts came in bursts of like four pieces at once and then radio silence. I spend most of my social media time on my personal account instead of my art one, but am I really gaining anything from that?
So I'm trying to make some new social media goals for this year. Unfollow Everyone (Personal Account) This is an exaggeration, but I have been gradually unfollowing everyone who is
Post Schedule (Art Account) I don't want to have months of no content, so even if it's posting works-in-progress all of the time, I want to start having specific days that I'll post on, and I think this starts with creating an art social media trello board. This way, I can have deadlines for when to post things, as well as what I want to post (progress on project A or project B? Finished piece C?). This will also help me stick to deadlines for completing pieces since I want to be able to post. However, as a trello board, it's also flexible enough that I could always move stuff around and post random doodles if I need more content/ want to post more often. Comment on Other People's Posts More (Art Account) If social media feels more like a community and I potentially make some more art friends, I think I will feel more motivated to post. And if not, well, at least I'm letting other people know that I appreciate their work. Anyway, those are my goals, if anyone who reads this has any other tips, comment them I guess! I'm writing this post 1/14/19, but it will be posted on 1/16 because that's the day that I'm actually presenting this work to the whole faculty and I didn't want any spoilers (Hi Mr. B). So I've been one of the officers of the GSA (Gender Sexuality Alliance, or Gay Straight Alliance) at school this year, and another club was created called the Student Equity Leadership Team. I've worked a lot with the latter this year, and that has lead up to what I'm about to do in two days: present to the entire school faculty about respecting transgender student's pronouns. As a semi-closeted trans/nonbinary kid who is only closeted because they're too scared to come out (ie not because of any danger, just fear of judgement) it's a little terrifying to know that in less than 48 hours, I will have spoken to over 100 people about respecting trans kids. However, it's also incredibly exciting to know that I'll (hopefully) be impacting future trans students at school, hopefully for the better. Anyways, in order to do this, I also made a handout in the form of a zine (a small booklet), and it was a lot like making infographics, so I'm counting it as art/graphic design for the purposes of this post. We wanted to have a handout that wasn't just another piece of paper, but that was still something that teachers could keep for future reference. It was kind of scary to make, because whenever you speak on behalf of a community, you don't want to get things wrong. The artistic aspects were fun to make though, and I think that they make the document much more interesting, especially now that it's in small booklet form on lavender paper. I want to open this post up to the larger description of activism in art though. While DSA is a very liberal school, there are definitely places where this zine - and any art with an activism undertone - could be considered propaganda, and that's another reason that it's so scary to create in this way: I don't want to be seen as some extremist who is too serious about politics. This project has really helped me learn that you can create without coming off that way: sharing your opinion, even in a biased way, doesn't mean you're extreme, it just means that you have an opinion, something that you're totally allowed to have. Respecting trans people is something near and dear to my heart that affects me and my friends, I should be able to make art about it, and express my opinions about it without feeling overly political. I can't keep being so ashamed of who I am that I hide it from my creative work. Anyways, here's a digital copy of the zine.
Over the past few year, my feelings on fanart have changed a lot, and I kind of just want to ramble about that here. Obviously, this is just my opinion on the matter, but I wanted to summarize it here. By fanart, I am specifically talking about art inspired by other pieces of media, or things that other people have created.
Like anything, I think it's good in moderation. It can really be flattering to the creator of the thing you are a fan of (assuming they see it), and can help you find a community of other fans. It is a pretty easy way to get attention online as an artist since people are likely looking for fanart of things they enjoy more than they look for random studies of coffee cups or the like, and there's nothing wrong with that. Fanart can challenge you too. If you're making a comic about Indiana Jones, and using reference photos and doing studies along the way, your action poses are probably seriously going to improve. It also lets you draw ideas that aren't from your own head, so it can push your limits a bit. This is also great for people with art block or just low motivation at the moment, because they don't have the be the most creative person on the planet and can still get results that makes them happy. However, I have two problems with fan art. The first is that it can lead to a lot of copying and tracing. I said earlier using reference images is great, and I do stand by that, but you shouldn't always try to exactly copy whatever you're making fan art for. If that's what you're doing, then people will ignore your art and just go experience the source content. Obviously, if you're just doing studies, then it's fine to copy as directly as possible, and there's a lot to be learned there. However, if that isn't your goal, then you have to add something of your own, be it putting old characters in new situations and environments, or just stylizing it in your own way. For instance, using real life pose references and then some references for a character will help you get better at poses and putting any character in different poses much more than just copying straight from one reference image. Also, the whole point of fanart really is to make something based on the original content, but that takes it further, and just copying does not do that. The other problem I have with fanart is questionable copyright usage. I don't really know how to feel about this one, other than that people need to respect what creators say on the issue. With events like comic cons, tons of artists make money off of fanart related products, and I think that, as if mentioned above, their art goes beyond just the original media it's based off of, then I think they definitely deserve to profit from their work. I just think it's also important to respect the right of the original creators to decide whether or not they are okay with people selling art based on their ideas. A lot of times fanart can create a bigger audience for creators, so I think generally that alone makes them okay with it, but it's just important to listen to the creators. Overall, I would say fanart should be fun, but just to remember to push yourself artistically if you can, and learn from it. Creative new ideas should always be valued and expressed in art, but that doesn't mean that you should never draw fanart either. Basically, just be careful that you aren't just copying things or making art based on them for popularity, but actually are enjoying the art you make and are challenging yourself as an artist. 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. 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.
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AuthorHi, I'm Abi, a DSA student who likes games, drawing, writing, and acting. Archives
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