Week 1 - Reflective Journal

 I think the best way to describe my first few days as an MA student is "overwhelming". It's been some time since I sat in a room of peers, feeling like I'm learning something from the ground up. It struck me how diverse our group was, with everyone bringing difficult skills and levels of experience. This was somewhat reassuring, as was the general atmosphere of the very first lectures.

I came away from the first week with a multitude of thoughts and plans on how to progress through this year, including:

• building a better understanding of reflective learning
• taking classes in concept art and 3D art to refamiliarise myself with methods and programs
• researching the games industry to gain a better understanding of development methods and pipelines

My first challenge is maintaining a reflective journal as a part of my development during my course, putting my thoughts, observations and learning experiences into a written form. The purpose of this is to take meaning from my experiences in order to learn new things and improve my work (Boud 2001: p.9-10). I am not particularly adept in putting my thoughts and feelings into a written form, though this is something I expect to improve as I complete more journal entries.

My second challenge is the three week Game Jam, in which myself and a small group of my peers must design and build a game to present to the rest of my class. In my undergraduate course I was very much used to working alone on a project, and even in group work there was an idea to "share the load" and work on the designs, animations and 3D work together. I am now in a position where my main purpose is to produce concepts, allowing other members of the group to bring them to life in a 3D setting. I realised I have a limited understanding of the process of game development, and the actual work that takes place during pre-production, production, and post-production; this is something I will research and learn about over the next couple of weeks.

Another issue that arose as my team discussed plans for the game jam was finding a visual style that both myself and the other artist on my team (James Thompson) would be happy working with, as well as one that could be taken to 3D quickly by our 3D artist (Zach Coates). It having been three years since I last did a large amount of design work, and practiced different styles, I have become comfortable in my current art style. I plan to confront this by attending some 2nd year classes in concept art, as well as research on basics of simplistic designs in media.

Fig. 1: Spence, 2022. Initial concept sketches for the Night Guard

Finally, I got to refresh my knowledge of Maya during a workshop in which we had to design and begin blocking out an asset based on the game Sea of Thieves. I chose to begin building a chest, and despite some knowledge coming back to me, I realised there was far more that had been forgotten. Luckily, our lecturer Adam was on hand to give help and advice, as well as produce an introduction video to maya, which I will be using to aid me in improving my chest.

Fig. 2: Spence, 2022. Chest sketches

Fig. 3: Spence, 2022. Building chest in Maya

References:

BOUD, David. 2001. ‘Using Journal Writing to Enhance Reflective Practice.’ New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education 2001(90), [online]. Available at: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ace.16 [Accessed 06/10/2022]

Images:

Figure 1. SPENCE, Nel. 2022. Initial concept sketches for the Night Guard. Private collection: Nel Spence

Figure 2. SPENCE, Nel. 2022. Chest sketches. Private collection: Nel Spence

Figure 3. SPENCE, Nel. 2022. Building chest in Maya. Private collection: Nel Spence