Well, I've never been any good at starting this kind of
thing, sitting at my desk, staring at the screen, trying to think what I should
write about myself. Do I just go for the usual boring crap? Try and make myself
appear to be something that I’m not?
In reality, I was a fine art student who was fed up of doing
the same thing for the last 4/5 years of her life; Get art supplies. Get
ridiculously indirect brief. Paint a picture. Come up with some sort of
pretentious, woolly justification as to why you decided to stick a shit tonne
of skittles into the shape of Obamas head and pass it off as artwork.
Ok, admittedly I never did that, but I did find myself stuck
in a rut of watercolours, fine liners, ink and bleach. As much as I loved the
style I was developing, it wasn’t taking me anywhere.
Initially I guess I thought I would stay with this and go on
to study Illustration or Fine art, but something just didn’t feel right about
that. I then found myself having an interest in animation after seeing my
boyfriends flat mates animation work. The 3D characters fascinated me and
seemed so impressive. After looking at a few universities I eventually ended up
at a De Montfort open day to go see what the animation course was like. The
course was really interesting and ticked some boxes, but I felt at the time
that the course wasn’t based on design enough. So, I looked around some other
courses, and -mainly by chance- sat in a Game Art Design talk on my own.
As I sat there my little list of what I was looking for
slowly got ticked off. This course offered the more traditional side to design,
most importantly refining our skills and a completely new venture for me to
explore, 3D Design! When it came to what they were looking for I felt I fit
pretty well into their expectations as well, plus I also had a little
experience in texturing 3D models at a basic level.
When it came to my interview and Heather, with a current
third year student, had seemed so enthusiastic about my work, it kind of just
sunk in that this was the university I was going to, this was my course.
So I guess that now makes me Kathryn Unsworth, Game Art Design
student at De Montfort University Leicester. Exciting stuff eh?
Well if you hadn't picked this up already, but a love of
games didn't bring me here. I like games, but admittedly I haven’t played that
many. More notable ones I have played are Skyrim, Oblivion, Final Fantasy,
Sims, Portal, Lara Croft, Legend of Zelda, Professor Layton, Spore and various
Mario titles. My gaming history has mainly been Nintendo and PC. As I played
games I always found myself drawn to the design side of them, and as a PC gamer
I got into creating downloadable content for games, using meshes and models
previously made and customising them with my own textures to create what I
desired for in-game. I would spend way more time doing this kind of thing
rather than actually playing the game!
My other interests are mainly Music, Reading and Films. I
have a very strong interest in music, some of my favourite Bands being; Sigur
Ros, Radiohead, Bjork, Brian Eno, The Twilight Sad, Jonsi, Portishead, Pink
Floyd, Vessels, Four Tet, Caribou, Interpol, Mogwai, Kate Bush, Hella, Grimes,
Efterklang, The Mars Volta, Grizzly Bear, Giraffes Giraffes!, Warpaint…. And I
could keep going. Music is a large part of my life, and I can’t imagine what it
would be like without it. I am also a regular gig and festivalgoer. In my
opinion there is nothing better than live music with people you love. (oh Kat
you sentimental bugger.) I also draw a lot of inspiration from Music, I always
work listening to music.
Films and Books also are a source of great inspiration, in a
similar way that Music is.
Enough on my interests, I should discuss what I aspire to
achieve this year.
I guess my main hope it to develop my skills as an artist so
that I start looking at the world around me in a different way. I want to
refine my sketching and rendering skills so that I am on a par, if not better
than, traditionally trained fine artists. Then, adding the skills I hope to
obtain in using 3D programs to extend my skill range and greatly increase my
employability.
After doing a little research into jobs available in
the games industry I came across a few jobs that would interest me, all quite
varied, but within the creative side of the games world. I think that after I
have done a bit of work on all areas on the course I will then be able to see
what direction I wish to take with my studies, how to tailor it to a specific
job.
