Reflection on Professional Practice and the course

This module is coming to an end and I thought it would be the time to evaluate my overall progression and reflection on Professional Practice, as well as the course in general during my second year of study.

Before the academic year had started I had looked into the things we would be doing and had talked to a few second years (‘previous’ students who were studying last year) what they had been working on and to get some insight to the things I would be doing. Initially the only thing I was worried about was finding work experience, which I don’t know how things would work out for me to find somewhere to do some work that relates to my practice and interests. Luckily there have been a few things that had happened that allowed me to follow my interests (selling at a convention) and to produce work for clients (First Story project). I thought I may struggle with this particular part of the module but things actually turned out alright and was fairly pleased with what I had done for it.

For the newspaper project I had mixed feelings with how it was handled. I feel slightly disappointed and I initially thought things wouldn’t be too bad since this is a group project, but I was wrong. I think there was an imbalance of mixing the right people together to create a strong/fair group. Our group was inconsistent in terms of communication and dedication.

The whole course in general was actually ok and it was not too hard as I thought, though I know that the second year of the course will be the hardest year, in terms of workload and expectations. There has been a few challenges, but not to the point where I actually struggle and feel stressed. Most of the work is doable, it’s all about time management and dedication. Tutorials with lectures for each of my modules were beneficial for my motivation and to understand how I could approach things differently, or perhaps to be a little more open minded. There hasn’t been a single problem (besides the newspaper project) in my studies for each module (still got Advance Drawing and Self-Publishing to finish) and I am surprised everything is going smoothly, I just need to concentrate and focus on the remaining modules once this one is finished.

Everything has been alright overall and I’m looking forward to 3^rd year for my FMP as I can finally explore my interests in digital painting further and to produce original/personal works for the project. This year has gone by fast and the work was manageable. The projects I had done for this year will help me ease my preparation for the 3^rd year and my final major project.

Inspiration

Over my years of study I had always looked into entertainment and popular culture, such as comics, games, films and animation, as my main area of interests and inspiration, as well as artists who worked in the fields of storyboarding and concept art. The one that I always had looked into the most was, perhaps video games. I don’t just play games in general; I usually pick up games that involve an in-depth story filled with a variety of characters and an expansive lore. Most of the games that I play are mostly role-playing types, where you play as the main character and you follow a journey through a narrative, as well as free roaming where you get to explore the world yourself and to find many hidden details that is outside of the main story.

The videogame that I find the most inspiration from would be “The Legend of Zelda” franchise. This may be a biased opinion, but this was the franchise I had grown up with, as well as being a big inspiration for stories and characters since I was little. Another videogame that I also liked was the “Final Fantasy” franchise that offers different stories and has an expansive lore for each game. Each entry (game) from the two franchises is entirely different to one another (although the narrative maybe somewhat similar to previous titles, which acts as a skeleton to create a entirely different story) and despite having similar qualities to their previous title they still offer a lot of content. Fantasy and Sci-Fi Fantasy are the two genres in videogames that I’m always interested in, since they offer so much imagination and story telling. Role playing games in particular are the types of games that I do find inspiration from, as it puts you into the shoes/perspective of the main character and feel more involved and connected with the story and characters. 

The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD (2013), one of the many titles in the franchise. The game stands out from the rest due to its cell-shaded Toon style.

Final Fantasy 15 (2016), the upcoming latest entry to the Final Fantasy franchise.

Within the entertainment industry of videogames I am currently following a few artists to help with Photoshop and digital painting. In today’s industry for entertainment, digital painting is becoming a skill that you would need and I wanted to continue to improve. I had only started digital painting back at the beginning of 2013, so it’s only been a little over 3 years since I had begun my journey to master the various methodologies of digital painting and to find my own voice/style.

Concept artist Feng Zhu is one of the digital artists I follow. He owns a school in Singapore, known as “FZD School of Design”, and has a YouTube account where he demonstrates techniques, ideas and Q&As on various topics and subject matters within the field of entertainment and storyboarding. He focuses on mostly games and sometimes films, but the knowledge he shares on his videos are very interesting and discusses his approach on his artworks, which I definitely find it essential to someone like me who is pursuing digital art as a professional practice. Most of the stuff I had learnt about digital painting is all self directed study and practice outside of university hours. While I may not learn digital painting on my course, I felt the need to spend time outside to learn it and at the same time I can incorporate the skills I had obtained and implement them into the projects in the course to help develop my skills ideas further. 

Concept art by Feng Zhu

Storyboard artist Ilya Kuvshinov is another digital artist who I had followed just a little over a year ago. He is known for his female character portraits and I followed him for his style. The simplicity of his works captured my attention and I had explored his methodology on digital painting which turns out to be very simple and not that hard to follow. He has helped me to be more open and to not over complicate things with heavy detail and to approach things simply in terms of colour. 

Art by Ilya Kuvshinov

Progression on Modules/Course

During the Monday session (04/04/2016) it was mostly focused on catching up with the newspaper project and work experience, as well as the research project (AD5004) which I had completed ahead of schedule before it’s due date. As an update for this post, I had completed my work experience and I had enjoyed some of the things I was involved in. The experience of getting a table at a convention to sell prints of original and fan arts was probably one of the highlights out of work experience, and it was one of the things I was keen of doing. The rest of the work experience was alright, though I had also enjoyed the live brief for the first story project, which is something I wanted to at least have some experience with, since something similar could potentially happen in the future.

The newspaper project is coming to a close and I am ready for the printing production of my group’s newspaper, however I still need to know the other member’s progression on how their newspaper spreads are coming along, and I feel a sense of dread that the other members who are somewhat laid back has not done their spreads yet, which will become of an annoyance since this will cause a setback on finishing the project before the deadline.

My overall progress within this module has been steady, with a few minor hold ups due to the other projects that were simultaneously happening at the same time, which made me go back and forth between them causing some work to be a little behind on progress.

Catching up with projects that were behind schedule was not a difficult task as I usually prioritise on things that are either lacking greatly in progress, or having upcoming deadlines (which I would preferably finish it a few days before hand so I can go back to it to make any adjustments or to add anything extra to the project).

As of now I’m pretty ahead with the deadline for this module, in terms of completing the work experience (including the online forms) and the newspaper project is not far from completion. There hasn’t been any problems with this module and the course in general (besides the problematic group effort for the newspaper project) and I am feeling comfortable in my current position with my studies for this year, the only thing I need to do is to catch up on one other module (Self-Publishing) which I am behind due to recent and upcoming deadlines.