Monday, 5 January 2015

The beginning of a new year and university term

BA5 and my first thoughts on the unit 


Today was my first day back to university after the Christmas holidays and it felt great to finally be heading back in lessons as I felt very demotivated to complete any sketches over the break which I am still really kicking myself about. Luckily I came out of the lecture today feeling inspired and excited due to our new brief as it just sounds fantastic.

This BA5 project is a brand new brief that hasn't been completed before by any previous year groups and our class is the first to give it a whirl which puts a bit of pressure on our year to do well. Over the period of six weeks we will be give two different 'Art Tests' that we will have to complete and hand in at deadline. Originally I was freaking myself out a bit as I thought that, from the name, it would be a written exam about the history of art of something along those lines but my fear was soon extinguished when we were given a proper description of what we would be doing. An Art Test is a type of brief that is given to interviewees in the induction process of applying for a job in the game industry at a certain company. It is a test that can be made up of many different parts and range in difficulty and specifications depending on which company you apply for. It is essentially testing the candidates to see if they are up to the standard they are looking for. It is a very important 'test' to take as is shows the employer things such as the artists art style, speed at which they work, ability to follow a brief etcetera to make sure they hire the correct candidate and that there is now plagiarism used. This is a very daunting process that artists must go through when applying for a job and many of them are unprepared for this hurdle but our course leader, Marie Claire, decided that this is something we MUST be prepared for in the future and thought she should give us a nudge in right direction and hopefully the upper hand against other candidates.

So there are around sixteen different art tests to choose from in BA5 and all of them are completely different and cater to different types of art specifications and styles which is a hell of a lot choice when it comes to choosing which one you want to do. Eight of have been created by the tutors of our course and the last eight have been created by different existing companies, ranging in size. For example one will be from the global and successful media company, Sony. And on top of this we were told that members of the companies will most likely be coming in to look at our work in person which is very nerve racking to think about. From the large choice we will be given to choose from we will be asked to pick something we feel confident in doing and choosing an area that we would focus on in the future so I was very excited to hear that there will be a 2D character concept art test that we can choose. I am really looking forward to reading that brief through and seeing weather it is from one of the larger companies or not. If it is a brief from Sony Picture Animations from example I would be extremely excited to complete it but also terrified of letting someone from the company assessing my work!

Overall I am really looking forward to the briefing we will receive tomorrow as it will be going through everything in far more detail and we will also be allowed to discuss which our tutors would our preferred artistic area is and will be allowed to read the tests through. I already know that I want to complete one of the 2D tests as it is the area I want to go into if I am employed by a company in the future so I am really interested to see what the specifications will be for the character concept one.
But with all this excitement for the new brief, there comes a huge bunch of nerves. I am a little worried about completing two different art tests in a period of six weeks, it seems to be a Deja vu of BA4 when we were given a huge amount of work which managed to stress everyone out a lose track of what we were meant to be doing which is something I really don't want to happen again. Also since I managed to get scrape a first for BA4 which I was really pleased with, I know have the pressure of keeping my grade at a similar level and work even harder to get a higher grade which is going to be really tricky for this brief as we have just so much to do and the whole area is completely new to us. Our course leader even said that this brief is very difficult and will be a challenge for us to complete but, negativity aside I am enthusiastic to work hard on this project and try my best to get another good grade and learn a lot about this process.


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