Year 2 Review - Self doubt and Crazy talk

So, we have just come to a close on our 2nd year at De Montfort University.
This sure has been a big year, I feel I have developed so much. Just putting our final submission disk together was making me really see how far I have come. Looking back at our very first projects, I am crying to myself, thinking ' what the hell was I doing??'
My artistic judgement has come on in leaps and bounds, and with Mitch joining the teaching staff, we have been learning techniques I never thought even existed.

This year has been so exciting, yet at the same time very sobering. It seems that everybody has had their little epiphanies, realising that actually, what we are doing is freaking hard.
We called it the 'mid game art crisis' after the first term, a lot of us became very existential and were strongly questioning whether this is what we should be doing.
Am I good enough? Is this what I really want? How much work can I put in without killing myself?
After watching John Cleese's talk on creativity I have realised we were all very stuck in the closed mind mode, especially as we were all in the same place, it was hard to get out of.
The way I looked at it was; what else am I passionate about?
Turns out, this is the only subject that I truly care about. I question myself daily on whether or not I am crazy for wanting to pursue Character Art; Watching Rich (last years graduate) struggling for some time, and seeing the standard I am expecting to get up to is absolutely terrifying.
But Rich made it, he worked his ass off and he is now in a position he wanted to be. It give me hope, after speaking to some character artist's and receiving some feedback and helpful tips, it started bringing me out of my closed state of mind.
Gradually we all relaxed a bit and managed to get back to our open minded state.
Once we got there, the rate of our development rocketed, we were all at full steam, pushing each other to achieve more than we ever thought we could. I am so thankful for what we have here at uni.

Yet, with people I am close to getting jobs, and the potential of me doing some internships (possibly a year long) I am starting to feel myself slip back into that closed minded state. I don't feel am I ready to go out into the big bad world yet. I mean, I am still in my safe game art bubble, the majority of it got popped compared to my euphoric mind set in first year, but I still have the stability of the people I trust and the creative environment we thrive in.
Luckily I am looking to do internships with my close friend Ben, so I am not completely alone, but I am still so afraid that my skills still aren't good enough. One of Emma's feedback for us when we presented our work, was that our confidence doesn't show. I agree, I say I have started to relax to feedback, which I certainly have, but I still find myself making excuses all over the place. I talk my work down, it is silly really as when you are in the presence of somebody working in industry you sort of automatically put yourself lower than them. Which isn't completely bad, but it is hard to over come that lack of confidence in your own work. It is something I need to work on.

As John Cleese said, confidence is one of the keys to getting to that open minded state. Not ego stroking, but just believing in yourself a bit. I guess it stems from education on the whole. My entire educational career (up to uni) has been people telling me that I should be doing something sensible like maths or science, that I will never make a living out of Art, what I love. It is not that I want to prove them wrong, I am purely following this path as it is what I care about, it is my passion, but the implications of that are that sense of self doubt. With opportunities presented to me like this, it seems that maybe I may be able to make it, that I do have potential.

Either way, I still feel I have matured in my outlook on things, as Anna often says what seems to keep getting us down is that fact that we can now see the bigger picture. That hill called university we have to climb seems minuscule compared to the mountain that is the games industry. I do have more confidence in my abilities, but I also doubt myself regularly. While this can be bad, I do not see it is a completely awful thing. For every time I doubt myself I remind myself why I am doing this and I tell myself that I am doing the right thing. That keeps me going, along with all the amazing people that I surround myself with.

On the whole, this year has been very 'eye opening' I feel I am developing my work ethic as well as my artistic judgement. I am happy with my progress, but I know I still have a long way to go. Pray it never ends as I don't know what I would do if I was not constantly trying to better myself.

I'm Back....

Soooo, back to Leicester! I'm glad to be back! I mean I love being at home, I love seeing my family and friends, but I've been struggling without some sort of routine. This summer has consisted mainly of me hesitating to leave Leicester (I stayed in my halls until the 22^nd of July, due to work), going on holiday for two weeks, then having a month at home where I felt somewhat at a loose end as to what to do with myself.

I had planned to do a bit of a mini group project with a few of my class mates. Before leaving to go home we had decided our project, put together some mood boards, started concepting and white boxing a little tavern scene. Somehow, although I am not surprised at myself, nothing much really came of it. I did some concepts but I never really got much further past that stage. I feel a bit bad for not chasing it up, but on the other hand I found myself getting quite a lot into my digital painting. While I was in Spain for those two weeks, I found myself dying to do some work, whether that was modelling or painting. I put the main reasoning down to the fact that the place I was staying was so beautiful.

Some Summer work....

We stayed in a little village called Frigiliana. It is situated in the hills and the buildings have red tile roofs and white bricks, the pavements are all cobbled in swirly patterns, very idealistic. But, another factor is that when I go on holiday with my parents they don’t like to do much apart from sit around the garden area and read books all day. This is all well and good and I appreciate relaxing for a short amount of time, but when it was getting on the 6 day mark and we were doing exactly the same thing that the days started dragging. As I mentioned before one of the main thing I established last year was that I am pretty crap at doing nothing, after being used to the constant list of things I need to do for uni, having absolutely nothing to do was an alien concept to me.

Me, Ben and Anna all got back right at the beginning of September so, after moving into our new houses (which are super awesome) we were excited to get back to the uni timetable and start doing some work.
This year I am super excited to start the character project and the group project. I think I am looking forward to being given a little more freedom on our briefs, with us having larger budgets and more artistic choices. I am mainly hoping to improve on my speed of work and managed to get more personal projects in on the side.
I have come to the realisation that the amount of work we do for the course, isn't even close to the amount we need to be doing if we realistically want a job when we graduate.  Also this is the year that we will be applying for internships, so it is very important to start putting a portfolio together as we will need them to apply.

I am excited about this year, but also very very scared. I kind of feel like I can see the scale of things a little clearer now, and that mountain I thought I had climbed last year was merely a small hill.