Thursday 21 November 2013

Recap: From Rainstorms And Other Obstacles

Time to catch up!


Time management is not always easy; And neither is writing this blog regularly. So besides having to work on my personal skill development I will also need to focus and come up with a schedule for myself to better balance my busy life. In the future I will try to aim to write these posts more regular, but for now I will continue with my recap-series to bring this blog up to date with my experiences at uni so far.



Drawing in the Rain.


So here we are, once again; Living in the United Kingdom does have its benefits at times but it also comes with one major problem for an artist: Rain.

While we are expected to do all our drawings from life, I do not have a problem with that at all, until the weather decides to put up a massive obstacle. Rain does not only make it a lot more uncomfortable to draw, it also likes to soak your sketchbook, ultimately ruining all of your work.

So what to do in hard times like these? Well first of all it's all about being flexible. Sure, it does rain quite often during this time of the year, however there will always be periods of dryness in-between the showers. This is the time that artists like myself should go out and draw! As weather predictions are not always 100% accurate, this means that you sometimes spontaneously need to go outside. This is not something a person can plan.

Another quite important part is equipment. I have invested in a camping chair which makes it a lot more comfortable to draw on the site. I also decided to get myself an umbrella for those rainy days. Now just to solve the problem of holding an umbrella while drawing with the other hand.



Work Progress.


But enough of me ranting about all the stuff that's making this course harder than it already is. Here is some of my progress that I have made over the past few weeks:

Life Drawing

While life drawing seems to be my weakest subject I do have to say that I kinda enjoy getting to use a variety of different mediums. I particularly like using charcoal, even though it seems to be a bit of a hassle and quite messy.

I can see slight improvement in my work, but it will still take quite a while for me to get proportion good enough to be even slightly happy with my drawings. Until then I must increase my practice. I ordered a mannequin to get the hang of drawing proportion from life, but I guess I will ultimately go and get some people that I can draw; even if it means I end up having to draw myself.

Week 2

Week 3

Week 5

Visual Design

On the other hand, the rest of my visual design stuff seems to be going great. I can see improvement simply by looking through the pages and I really enjoy getting out to draw different things (as long as it's not raining of course..)

Week 2

Week 3

Week 3

Week 4

Game Production

Probably the easiest part for me. Since I came to this course with 2 years of experience in using 3DS Max, I do not particularly find it difficult fulfilling the set tasks, however it seems like I have recently not been putting in enough time into my models and I found myself rushing through them way too fast and not putting in the effort that I could put in.

Nonetheless I do still think that they are not too bad, just not good enough for what I could make out of them. In the future I will try and spend more time on creating my models and especially my textures, which I seem to have most troubles with.

Phonebox Project

Architecture Project

Thursday 17 October 2013

Recap: Tough Beginnings / Welcome to Boot Camp

Week 1

Visual Design.

Having not done art for quite a while certainly did show its effect during the first week. Literally being thrown into cold water and starting right off with some life drawing, followed by heading down to the river to explore single-point perspective. "Welcome to Boot Camp", as my lecturer kindly pointed out.

Life Drawing.

The first day was quite tiresome but still I decided that this is not going to be the end and I decided to fight. I was given a chance and I am sure not to throw it all away. So after a bit of difficulties in the beginning I went out and completed the set task. In fact I also noticed quite a bit of improvement from day to day (most likely just getting the hang of drawing stuff again).

Thumbnail Sketches.

In the end I managed to produce a quite pleasing piece of work. Sure, it's not grade 'A' quality work just yet, but hopefully I will get there eventually.

Final Piece.

Game Production.

As I mentioned within my introduction I already had experience with 3D modelling and using 3DS Max. Therefore having another "getting started" session with 3DS Max was probably the easiest task during my first week. After getting introduced to all the basic tools and navigating within the program we were set of creating a Dalek from Doctor Who, staying within the 1500 tri limit.

Sounds easy enough. As this was just an exercise to get used to Max we didn't have to texture it, but just to make it look a bit more convincing I decided to just slap on some materials.

Dalek Render.
I was quite pleased with my result although I probably could've polished it up a bit here and there by removing some unneeded polys.

Wireframe.

So this is it.. This was my first week here at DeMontfort University. So far I am impressed with how the course is laid out and I am looking forwards to my future weeks and all the work I will be doing. I will try and update this blog a bit more regularly (once I finished catching up).

Thank for reading and if you (the reader) have got any suggestions then please always feel free to post them. Whether it is related to my work or my blog, I am always happy to receive some feedback.

See you in the next post!~

Wednesday 9 October 2013

An Introduction To Myself

So here we are... We are at the beginning of a journey, the beginning of a new life, the beginning of possibly the most important time I will ever spend during my life. My name is Dominic Mathuse and I am a Game Art Design student at DeMontfort University.

History.
(Or "How It Began..")

To start off, I would like to give a bit of information about my history. I was born in Germany and spent most of my life there. While I always seemed attracted to video games and quickly grew up to be interested in not just playing them but also creating them, I have never been the person to consider myself an artist; in fact I still not completely do so.

I was born with a strong logical mind and therefore never spent too much time being creative, even though I always enjoyed it the most. My first bit of creative interest started developing when I began to play piano at the age of 10. I only had lessons for a year but since then always spent time playing piano whenever I felt like it and quickly I discovered that I was also interested in coming up with my own songs, even if I was missing the required knowledge to achieve this.

So over the years it became more and more clear to me that even though I was born with a strong logical mind and it would probably be the easiest for me to end up becoming a mathematician or physicist, I was actually way more interested in the process of creation. Being able to put all the mess that is going through my head into a form of creative piece was what I enjoyed doing all throughout my life and I decided that this is definitely something I would love to do for the rest of it, too. However, my journey of becoming a games artist doesn't start there...

Choices?
(From School To College)

After moving to the UK I was, for the first time in my life, being presented with a choice of optional courses I could do at school. One of the courses I chose to do was art and design and while I still wasn't particularly good at it, I definitely still enjoyed it as much as I always did and so I went through and actually managed to pass my GCSE. Still not being quite sure as what I wanted to become I then applied to college to study maths as well as computing as those were the only subjects I felt most comfortable in studying. However due to complications in my family I ended up moving away and not being able to attend the college I applied to.

A few gap years later, still not having done my college education, I eventually decided that in order to succeed in life I would need to specialize myself in a particular area. Having taught myself very basic programming skills and due to my love for games I quickly decided that the games industry would be the way to go. I didn't enjoy programming too much though and I didn't think of myself as being good enough to be an artist so I wasn't quite sure what I actually wanted to do. I went researching and eventually found a college course which seemed not too specialized, offering me an insight into different jobs within the games industry (or at least so I thought.)

Having successfully applied for the course I then went back into studying and finally had the chance to start setting goals for my future. However, I quickly realized that the course was a lot more art based than I first had imagined and I became a bit anxious as to whether I was good enough or not, but this lifted within the first few weeks when I noticed that many people on the course were equally skilled in art and because I always enjoyed being creative I took this as an opportunity to maybe learn a bit more about art.

Going through the years I had learnt a lot about the games industry and the different roles within that I could become part of. While I wasn't very good at drawing I first got taught how to create 3D models and immediately discovered that I had a lot less problems with that than I had with drawing. So being a "natural talent" in 3D I quickly worked my way to be the best 3D artist of the class, which then resulted in me being entered into the 2011 first ever World Skills Speed Modelling competition, which was hosted at my college, and winning the gold medal. (A bit more about this little competition can be found here and here). This had not only given me more confidence, but it also finally set my goal clear: I wanted to become a 3D artist (or did I?)

Uncertainty!
("Realizing Your Ambition")

Progressing through to my second year at college I then discovered that 3D might not be as simple as it looks. While I could create models easily, I struggled with getting textures right. On several projects we were allowed to use photographic textures, but on others we either weren't or there just wasn't any available so I needed to paint my own. Since I wasn't very good at drawing this caused problems and again my goal became a bit unclear. If I would want to be a 3D artist I would need to improve my drawing skills!

So the end of the second year came closer and closer and it was time to apply to university and again there was many different choices. While quite a few courses seemed more 3D or programming based there were a few art based courses as well. One of the ones that stood out the most was the Game Art Design course at DMU. Knowing that it would straight on require me to be able to draw though I wasn't sure whether I was good enough to even bother applying, but I decided to do it anyway (got nothing to lose, right?).

Surprisingly enough I then received an invitation to an interview (the other universities gave me an offer straight away). This was the time that I had to show them that I was ready for the course. I knew that they expected high standard work, mostly for drawings. Looking through what I had created during my time at college, I quickly realized that my portfolio was not only lacking on quality but also on quantity. So I decided to spent as much free time as I had during the upcoming weeks to my interview trying to improve my portfolio to as high of a standard as I could.

The interview day came by and I went through it quicker than I had hoped. Not only was it shorter than my friends interviews but I also still felt like I wasn't good enough to get an offer, but not giving up hope I went back home and eagerly awaited the results of my interview. The first batch of offers were sent out and while a friend of mine already got offered a course, my application was held for further consideration. A few more long and sleepless weeks I then finally received the e-mail that made my heart jump high into the sky. I managed to get a conditional offer!

Now it was time to get through my college course and achieve the grade I needed to actually get onto the course. So even if I was struggling with time management towards the end of the year I managed to get everything done and left college with quite pleasing results. I then got offered an unconditional offer and immediately decided that DMU was going to be my firm choice.

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So here we are... While I still don't consider myself an artist I am pleased that I have been offered this opportunity to study this course and I am confident that it will give me the skills that I am missing to finally be able to call myself and artist. This blog will follow me throughout my journey of development and the 3 exciting years that I have in front of me.

Thanks for reading.