Limitations on creativity

It's strange to think that sometimes having limitations can open up more ways to be creative. I started thinking about this after Gamecity. Having helped out in the Indiecade for a couple of days, I was struck by what some of the games managed to achieve by actually have less going on that most mainstream games. The Indiecade, for those of you who may have missed out, was an arcade showcasing games made by tiny development teams or students. Some had been created entirely by a single person.

The fact that many of these games could not compete with the technological achievements of mainstream games actually seemed to free up the creative aspect of many of them. One of my favourites which I've actually downloaded and have been playing at home is Endless Forest.


In Endless Forest you play as a deer with a human face. You can communicate with other players simply through gestures and occasional mooing. There isn't really much of an aim either. You can explore, there are random events triggered by the game's creators, and you can collect different items to change the appearance of other deer from around the environment. It's easy to see why this could quickly become boring, but I find it quite liberating.
There's no pressure to do anything, and the fact that no one can type means you don't think of the other players as people sitting at their keyboards, but rather just as the deer they are presented as. It's very absorbing, and the fact that there aren't really goals makes it easy to dip in and out of.


Another game that was interesting was Braid. Braid is a 2D sidescrolling platformer. The main idea of the game is that we should learn from our mistakes, but not have to suffer the consequences of them. So in the game, you can rewind time at any point, for as long as you like. This way, if you are killed by an enemy, you can rewind time and revive yourself. You have now learned something about how or why the enemy attacked you, and can change tactics accordingly. The real puzzles begin when some items are not affected by time, or behave differently when exposed to time reversal. It leads to puzzles where you are forced to fling yourself onto spikes or drop to a place you have no way of escaping from in order to grab items such as keys which you can drag backwards through time with you.

While games such as Prince of Persia have the time rewind element, the fact that Braid has no limits on its rewind system makes you play completely differently. Prince of Persia still forces you to be cautious, whereas in Braid you can fling yourself into a situation just to see what will happen, and then reverse it if it wasn't the outcome you wanted.

So that's how it applies to games, but what about art? Forcing yourself into a limited artistic situation can lead to interesting results. It seems though, that you need to push it away from the familiar to really get deeper. Everyone uses pen and pencil, limiting yourself to just one of those doesn't cause any difficulties or present you with problems you have to solve.
However, if you only allow yourself to use tin foil and glue, or paint and a piece of card with no paintbrush to draw with, you start to open up more interesting things in what you are producing. The fact that you have having to fight your choice of media in order to show what you want makes you think differently than if you had chosen something you can use with ease, and this shows in the piece.

You get unexpected outcomes, things you didn't mean to put there simply because you're not good at using the media. Rips in the paper with the craft knife that actually look really good, mistake lumps of paint that show contours. Sure, it might look terrible, but that's the risk you take. And the best part is that you can give people the same media to use and everyone will use them differently, there is still personal style even in such an unfamiliar thing.

So what's my conclusion? A selling point for most games is going to be having the latest graphics and engine technologies. But sometimes the games without those things have got something more interesting to say than those with them.
If we can just learn to take risks with the small creative things we do, maybe it will feed into everything else.

Cooking

I thought I'd make a post about cooking. Cooking is one of my hobbies which has only really started once I got to uni. I think of cooking as being a very creative process, although it isn't normally mentioned in the list of creative things everyone has been making in these blog posts.
Having had a trawl around the internet, there's not that much about cooking in terms of the creative benefits it brings. It seems to be assumed that you're cooking to produce the end result, rather than enjoying the process itself.
I don't like this idea. Cooking can be as much fun as any other creative activity. My favourite thing about cooking is mixing stuff together. It's like making mud pies in the garden when I was a kid... only hopefully without the horrendous food poisoning which would inevitably result from actually eating mud pies.
Throwing in loads of things which on their own are rather unremarkable and turning them into something that tastes good is one of the most satisfying things for me. It reminds me a lot of painting - paints on their own are nice, but you have to put them together to really achieve something worthwhile. My rapidly expanding collection of herbs and spices reminds me of my mostly useless collection of art junk in my room. Sure, I don't have a use for tons of different types of wool right now, but one day I'm sure I will.

I think perhaps cooking isn't seen as being creative because you're following a recipe. When you have strict instructions, is there room to be creative? Of course there is. You have to exercise personal judgement in when stuff is done, when to move to the next step. You can do things differently to how the recipe says. You can add, substitute, take away, present differently. Or of course, you can always do things wrong. Sometimes you'll have a happy accident, other times you will do something monumentally dumb like burning rice and stinking out the entire downstairs of our house.

Of course, there is the theory that cooking is actually some elaborate form of procrastination, and that the whole process, creative or not, is simply an excuse for me to avoid doing my actual work. I'll let you be the judge.

Creativity continued

For my mechanical project I've been researching Leonardo Da Vinci, and one of the most interesting things I've found about him is how he managed to combine so many different skills and areas of interest.
Da Vinci was "an artist, architect, musician, scientist, geologist, physicist, designer, mechanic and inventor" as it says in the book I borrowed from the library. In the 1400s, artists weren't mainly hired for their artistic skills alone, but for their knowledge of engineering, which they acquired during their apprenticeship. In an age of changing warfare, new inventions and reworked traditional weapons were the key to success.
Learning about everything makes complete sense. It's what I thought my art foundation would be, being taught as many different ways of creating as possible, so you have more tools at your disposal. Unfortunately it didn't really work like that, which I think is a shame. For all I know, I could have some secret metalsmithing talent which will now forever lie dormant.

Things are split up far too much, especially when it comes to school subjects. History links to geography, which links to the sciences, and then maths, and then music and so on. Separating things so much makes sense from a teaching perspective, but also forces people to drive a wedge between their interests.

Is it wise to specialise? Does focusing on one subject specifically give you a deeper understanding, or should you widen your horizons and have a larger understanding of everything?

I've often wondered if it's best to train for something completely different to what you actually want for a career in life. That way when you do work your way there, you'll have a completely different outlook and set of skills to everybody else, and will maybe think in a more creative way about the tasks in hand. Having come from a wider employment circle, you'd also have more objectivity.

Perhaps we should all have an Ancient Greek style education, where we are apprenticed into as many different jobs as possible.

Hooray for the Tate

I ended up at home this weekend, and therefore ended up London town. After watching Have I Got News For You the week before and finding out that several people had fallen down into the current exhibition in the Tate Modern, consisting of a crack in the floor, I decided to go, and dragged Tim along with me. The piece is called Shibboleth and it's by Doris Salcedo.
Looks impressive doesn't it? It's really not as vast as it seems in that picture. The crack is only about as wide as a person's leg in the widest sections, so to fall down it you'd have to be pretty determined.
I've seen some really amazing exhibitions in the Turbine Hall, and a piece has to be incredibly powerful to hold its own in the space there. I don't think Shibboleth really did it for me. The crack seems very unnatural, it has regular spacing and you can see the chicken wire holding the two sections apart. It does make sense as the piece is about separation in society, and therefore man made divisions, but it seems to distract from what should be a powerful reflection about nature. Tim spent the whole time trying to figure out how it had been created.

But even though Shibboleth was not all I was expecting, there was another nice surprise. This monstrosity, sitting outside the Tate Modern. Maman, by Louise Bourgeois. It's an amazing sculpture, alien yet so very rooted in the familiar. Kids were saying to their parents that they wished it were real while Tim and I just widened our eyes in horror at each other.
We also saw some people having to shield their view as they walked past along the river, probably due to arachnaphobia. It seems almost insensitive to have a sculpture which for some people is horrific, out in full view in a popular area. Even worse is the face that there are posters all over the London Underground with the spider on, advertising the full Louise Bourgeois exhibition.
Art is supposed to provoke a response, but if it is involuntary, and people don't want to be exposed to the art in the first place, is that fair? Should art be concerned with what is fair anyway? It's certainly not concerned with what is legal in many cases.
But anyway, the sculpture was certainly unexpected, and even helped me out with my drawing project a little bit.

Creativity

OK, so this is the start of us revisiting the issue of creativity. After the interesting video shown to us by Mr P about creativity being stifled by the school environment, I decided to look into that a bit more. I work with kids in the summer so I feel like I have some vague connection to the issue.

I found this on the National Assosciation of School Psychologists website, which was very interesting to me:

The personality traits which some creative children develop are often viewed by others as strange or unproductive:
(a) Free Thinking. Toying with ideas may appear undisciplined and lacking in goal orientation;
(b) Gullibility. Creative children get excited about "half-baked" ideas and may not see the drawbacks or flaws that an adult would easily see;
(c) Humor. Creative children find humor in ideas which adults consider to be very serious. This ability to question and see other perspectives may be interpreted as mocking and obnoxious;
(d) Daydreaming. Creative children learn through fantasy and solve many of their problems through its use. Letting one's mind wander can help imagination to form new connections but may be seen as being inattentive or spacey;
(e) Aloneness. Creative thinking develops from delicate, unformed ideas. Children need to be alone while their ideas emerge, but society's emphasis on togetherness makes this difficult; and
(f) Activity. Ideas often come at times of "doing nothing." But once the idea comes, the creative child will become absorbed in the activity. This fluctuation, from what may seem to be laziness to over commitment to only one thing, is confusing and frustrating to others.

I wonder how many of those are familiar childhood traits of people on this course, and how of us didn't even realise what they were indicative of? Thinking back, I was certainly gullible in many situations because I wanted to believe in things that I thought were exciting.

I also found a few lists with Do's and Don'ts for encouraging creativity when planning activities with children.
Don't: Constantly watch over them, evaluate their work, offer rewards, over control, encourage competition, restrict choice, give examples.
Do: praise work, remember that the creative process is more important than the final product.
OK, most of those make sense but some of them are just impractical. Restricting choice is often a necessary evil, especially with things like equipment. If you get all the art equipment out for every session, you'll spend half your day getting it out and putting it away and all the kids' work will be coated in an inch thick layer of glitter which will never dry. And glitter gets everywhere. For their choice of what to do with their own work, sure they can do whatever they like.

The one I did really take issue with was 'Don't give examples'. Kids copy stuff, it's what they have always done. I drew a dinosaur on a whiteboard once just to make the art room a bit more interesting. There was extra time at the end of the activity so we let the children draw stuff. At the end I collect up 12 drawn copies of my dinosaur from the board.

When we offer a choice of activity, being able to say 'you can make a hat like this one' and demonstrate the hat, is far better than just saying 'you can make a hat', it captures their imagination more and gives them more ideas. Children do have brilliant imaginations, but they also draw a blank on so many occassions it makes you wonder.

In the morning on playschemes, we have a big roll of wallpaper for the kids to draw on. They're meant to draw stuff to do with the theme of the week, things like Summer, around the world, history, but they can do whatever they like really. A lot of times you would tell them what the theme was, and encourage them to draw things and they would have no ideas or enthusiasm at all. Around the world especially stumped them completely.
So I guess my main point from all that was that children are unpredictable and you can do everything articles tell you to and still get it wrong.

I also found this poem, called The Little Boy by Helen Buckley. It illustrates brilliantly the problems stifling creativity creates. And the sad thing is, this was written in the 1960s and not much has changed.

On an entirely different note, I found an article about how the height of ceilings affects creativity. The article is here, but the basic summary is that people think in more abstract terms when in a room with a higher ceiling. However, this does not extend to being outside, without a ceiling. Perhaps we should see if we can apply to have the graphics floor removed entirely so we could have a nice high ceiling in the lab? Maybe that storm last year was trying to tell us something.

Crying for fun and profit!

If you don't get your way, cry and throw a wobbly. This seems to be the common mode of attack for many kids at work. However, what they don't know is that all the staff have absolutely no tolerance for this, as when you let one kid get away with it, they'll all start to do it.

Allow me to provide examples. One merry Tuesday we were working in a village which is barely in the district the playschemes serves. The main road is actually called The Street, as it's the only flipping road there. We all have a theory at playschemes that every kid in the village is related to one another, with their collective father being Mr *villagename*. Some of the kids are Odd.

But anyway, we only have 12 kids so we decide not to offer separate sport and art activities like we usually do but to lump them all together. It sounds a bit mean but when you have 4 kids decide they want to do sport and the rest want to do art, the sport kids are going to struggle to have a decent game of anything.
So we start playing uni-hoc (kids are given numbers, when their number is called out they play one on one hockey with the corresponding number from the other team). Great fun, everyone loves this game! Except we have two sulkers in the corner. One is just sulking, the other one is full blown crying.
They don't want to play this. In fact, they want to go home. They haven't even given it a go. As it's the start of the day and some kids get a bit homesick, they're found another activity, but the cycle starts to repeat itself and our patience wears thin.

The cryer proceeded to throw several strops, each with different excuses as to why she wanted to go home. She was ill, she had a headache. She came up to me at lunchtime and told me that her dog was at the vets and she needed to phone home to check if he was alright. It was clearly an excuse to phone home and whine about how she didn't want to be here.

Even in the art activities she threw strops when things didn't go her way. When her clay didn't turn out right, she started to cry.
At the end of the day the deputy leader told her mum that if she didn't want to be here, it was pointless bringing her.

At another site we had a girl who cried in order to spite other people. Some girls were playing a game and then suddenly one leaves the group and sits down in a corner, crying. I ask her what's wrong and she says the other girls stole the ball off her. I ask the other girls and they seem genuinely confused, saying that was part of the game they were playing. I ask if they'll apologise anyway as the other girl seems upset. They do so and the girl continues to be in a huff.

She later asks me when one of the other playworkers will be coming back off her lunch break (she'd grown attached to her), and threw a strop when I told her it would be 15 minutes or so.
"But she said she'd be back in a MINUTE"
"It's a figure of speech. She didn't literally mean one minute. One minute to have your lunch in is a bit harsh"
"But she said in a MINUTE!"
"Have you never heard someone use the phrase in a minute? It just means an amount of time!"
A pout, followed by her storming off.

I caught her later trying to land some other girls in trouble. When I was talking to them she had a massive grin on her face, thinking I was telling them off. I confronted her about it.
"I'm just a happy person!"
"If you're such a happy person, why were you sulking earlier?"
"I wasn't sulking. I was having a tantrum!"

Sigh

I hate children

And my job has only confirmed that.
OK, that comment was a little sensationalist. I don't hate all children. On an individual basis I quite like many of the kids at work. But as a whole, children are awful. Children are like humanity filtered down to it's basic elements.
Children are curious, and they are innocent. But they are also cruel, selfish and ignorant. They are also incredibly prejudiced without even realising what a terrible thing it is.
I suppose you want some examples.

Gender values are hammered into children as soon as they can start absorbing information. Girls like Bratz, Barbie, Dora the Explorer, etc. Boys like Transformers, Star Wars, etc. There is no middle ground for a lot of them.
"You can't play football, you're a girl!" This statement, and many others like it, have made my blood boil these past few weeks. Where are they getting these ideas from?! Yes, a lot of the girls are not as interested in football as the boys, and therefore are not as good at it. But to say they CAN NOT play is just unreasonable to me.
"Euuuuuurgh, you like girls' stuff!" When said to a boy this is for some reason one of the most cutting insults there is. I have tried explaining that even though so-and-so might not actually like Barbie, there is nothing wrong with him liking it if he wants to.
*Cue puzzled look* "But he's a boy!" It went round and round like that.

You also really see the differences between the genders at this age. Young boys are awful. They won't sit still until they have run out all their energy, they play up and refuse to listen, they fight. And if there's a creative activity of any kind it always comes back round to ways of killing things. Or creatures that kill things. Or just killing. It actually seems to be an inherent male thing.
Conversely, young girls are also awful. The trick with girls is that they never SEEM to be awful. They are a lot better at the creative activities than a lot of the boys and they join in with the sports. But when it gets to play times they get nasty.
"SHE did this to me!" "So-and-so's being mean!"
They will gather in groups and giggle about each other. They will cajole others into doing their dirty work for them and send their lackeys to say things to people or attack them with play equipment. They lie to you about what others have done. They enjoy getting others into trouble. They sulk, they cry, they get in a huff about nothing.

So, summary: Boys are into causing physical pain, girls causing emotional pain

It really makes you think. If it weren't for hormones that kick in at puberty, I honestly think men and women would continue having little or nothing to do with each other for the rest of our lives.

That post seemed very negative, but I've had a terrible day today. We only had 6 kids (all boys) and they managed to drive us all absolutely crazy.

So that was gender values, next update, I shall write about crying for fun and profit!

City of Heroes

Alex tries to kickstart his modelling career

In other news....

I made a 3D graphic for one of my website designer mates. Check out the rotating Z at the top of this page. Uh huh, that was me. Pretty happy with it, and it gave me good experience of working on something that didn't really have a final outcome planned out from the start.


I wonder if saying 'Hey I designed your website banner logo' will get me in for free?

Goodbye Bede Hall

Well, I am currently at home as I'm typing this post, although I'm heading back to uni tomorrow so I can go to the GameCity meeting. I just thought as I started this year's blog with antics of me living in halls, it would be fitting to post something about moving out.
Halls has been a positive experience for me on the whole. I got on with pretty much everyone in my flat, which I know is a pretty rare thing. I aim to keep in contact with several of my flatmates next year and continue our girlie nights out. Dancing to cheesy music and drinking strange alcoholic cocktails made of whatever was on offer from Nat's, does it get any better?
However, life was not all sunshine and roses. Things I will not miss:

• The guys downstairs with their infernal music travelling up through the floor
• The constant stench of weed throughout D block
• The hall manager who hates all of humanity, with special wrath saved up for students
• People rolling in at 2 in the morning screaming/ singing 'Oggy oggy oggy, oi oi oi' in the courtyard
• Fire alarms at 3am
• The piles of bins in the kitchen (which actually spawned maggots at one point, thanks everyone!)
• Becki with her cooking that splashes everywhere, thieving of cheese graters to grind weed, and screeching arguments with her boyfriend at midnight - complete with slamming doors and sobbing in the toilets. When asked to be quiet the response was 'I'M HAVING AN ARGUMENT!'

So I'm glad that chapter of life is closed and next year I will be in a house. With 3 guys. Everyone has told me I'm crazy and to be honest I don't doubt it. Alex is already threatening to limit my time in the bathroom. He shall be pranked, and pranked severely.

Everything I cook is orange.

I discovered this when I decided to defrost something I'd previously cooked from the freezer. Only problem was, I - in all my infinite wisdom - had not labelled it.
"Well," I thought. "It's orange, so it must be spaghetti sauce or bean chilli." Easy.
Six hours later and said object is defrosted. And is in fact chicken tikka. Good job I like chicken tikka.

I had a sitdown and a think about these events and I came to the conclusion that EVERYTHING I cook is in fact orange. Or at least turns orange when you freeze it. I shall dazzle you with a list:

Bean chilli
Chicken tikka
Spaghetti bolognese sauce
Bacon pasta sauce
Chicken fajita mix
Sweet and sour anything
Sausages in barbeque sauce

The one exception to this rule was when i tried to make a stew of my own invention and it froze grey. Which is really not a very appetising colour, and just goes to show that I should not try to be creative in the kitchen ever.

What is it? Nobody knows.

OK, I felt I should blog about something, simply because I haven't done so in over a week.
I achieved some, but not all of my holiday objectives. I did work at playschemes and earnt myself some cash by playing in glue and dealing with children on a sugar high. I also went round London a lot and returned to some of my favourite places. Canary Wharf, the Natural History museum and Covent Garden.
I didn't quite make it to Turkey. The flight costs went up too much so we went on a day trip to France and Belgium instead. It was lots of fun and I returned with crateloads of cheap alcohol. All the bottles are currently lined up on top of my shelves like an identity parade.
Welcome to sunny Belgium!

It's nice to be back, it seems like I've been here weeks I've already done so much. Night out at Liquid sporting a top hat, surprise birthday party for Alex round Caz's (a big surprise as it was 3 weeks after his actual birthday), lots and lots of Lord of the Rings and two house viewings. Phew!
And I have actually done some work. I should really get over to the library and try to scan all my sketchbooks in, but I might give up and just take photos.

Being ill is really quite pants.

I have grossly swollen tonsils which makes swallowing food and drink very painful, achy ears which has also thrown off my balance, achy joints, a raging headache and when it gets towards evening time I go very hot and cold and need 2 blankets and a jumper.
Needless to say I'm not particularly thrilled about the situation. It's always my luck that I fall ill at the start of a weekend so it's impossible for me to get to a doctor's and get any medicine, so I've had to make do with homeopathic remedies which one of my mum's friends does. To be honest, I'm not sure if I even believe it works but I have no better options right now.
I was warned that it might make me feel worse before it makes me feel better, but this morning I have woken up feeling just the same, although the headache seems to have got a bit worse. Fantastic.
Mum's friend is making me another remedy at the moment but I'm not sure if I want to take it. The other one didn't exactly do any good, who's to say this one will?

It's not like anyone I know even has a nasty cold thing! Where has this come from!? I seem to have a magical ability to pick up slight traces of an illness and magnify it, causing myself misery. I managed to do it last year by catching shingles, although having read that article it seems it just comes from dormant chicken pox. Surprisingly, that doesn't make me feel much better.

So, what's going down in Louiseworld?

Right this second I am listening to all my utterly terrible cheese music that I found on all my CDs at home. You know the ones. You buy them when you're about twelve and S Club 7 ARE the best thing ever. You discover them a few years later, feel disgusted with yourself and bury them under a pile of Basement Jaxx and Artful Dodger (or bands of choice). Then you rediscover them a few more years later and accept that yes dammit, S Club 7 WERE the best thing ever and rip them all to your PC.
I don't care what you all say about it, I am going to be happy in my little pop bubble.

So, what's been happening? Well, I dragged Alex, Tim and my friend Chris to the Tate with the plan of hurling ourselves down the slides, but it didn't really happen because of the queues. So we went round the Tate and chilled out in the park in Canary Wharf instead. I may also be furthering the 'London Ducks' series of photos. Yes it's now a series.

I have also been working at playschemes, where I get paid to eat chips and make mess. Well, it's not quite like that. I also have to help manage a load of kids, endure a lot of humiliation from doing stupid dances and get sat on by small children at high speed. Small kids are boney.

I am also practically exploding with delight at the sight of this marvelous trailer. Yes it's the new Ratchet and Clank, Tools of Destruction. It looks like Insomniac is having a true return to form. No more generic dark and grungy FPS, no more stupid arena combat, trying too hard to be badass Ratchet and Clank. A fun, brightly coloured, humour-filled, lovingly crafted Ratchet and Clank.It has crazy enemies, it has grindrails, it has boss fights, it has Ratchet's poofy tail. What more do I need? I cannot wait for this. The only problem will be finding a PS3 to play it on. I don't even want one, I just want to borrow one so I can play this game.

Well, I'm home again now. Been up to London today and eaten sushi, yum! I am definitely planning on going on the slides at the Tate modern before this holiday is done.

We also had assessments Tuesday and Wednesday which went very well for me. I got an A- for the van which I am very pleased with, and if I fix the errors I identified with it (namely the shape of the bumper and the amount of polys on the roof) then I could make it an A.

The art assessment was interesting for me to say the least. I was really happy that all the tutors were so positive about my work, and it's really inspired me to crack on and keep doing crazy stuff like embossing and ink blowing and stuffing things in packets full of hair gel. I'm happy that I got some positive reaction from people in the class who didn't even realise that we could do stuff like that, and I hope that a lot more people do go and just have a play with different materials. The worst thing that can happen is that it goes wrong and even then you've learnt something.

In a way, I'm also pretty happy I got some negative reactions. People don't see the point, people think I'll get laughed at, but I don't really mind. It shows that I'm doing something different, and (to quote Cool Runnings) "People are always afraid of what's different." I also got defended by all four tutors, which was pretty cool.

I think the crowning glory for me was Mr P's comment (paraphrased)." I told you all to do a blog task about the definition of creativity. This is creativity. "
I think it's possibly the most huge compliment I've ever recieved about my work. Let's hope I can keep this up.

The Final Blog task

I came to this course from an illustration focused art foundation, which turned out to be nothing like I was expecting. I was expecting to be taught different skills in different media to help me establish what I wanted to do in my art based future. Before about year 12 I wasn't even sure I wanted to do art. Art was just something that happened in my spare time and in art classes. It was part of me, but not necessarily who I was. As I specialised further and further in my school career, dropping things for GCSE, dropping things for A level, I began to realise that I couldn't just let art go.

I'd had the idea of drawing concept art for games for quite a while, I think since Ratchet and Clank 1 where one of the secrets you could unlock was the concept art for the game. I was inspired and the idea lodged in the back of my head along with my other vague plan - illustrating books.

So I moved on to the art foundation, where I was given vague ideas and comments. 'Produce a final piece on the idea of a votive object.' 'Draw without drawing' 'This is wrong but we will not tell you why'. When we came back after the Christmas break and were told we had better be damned confident in ourselves if we were going to be illustrators because we would have to sell ourselves every second of every day I broke down. I knew I couldn't do it. Couldn't compete with the egos and strange dress sense and overwhelming confidence in something I didn't even understand.

So I explained to my Mum what had happened and I bunked the next day and spent the entire time trawling UCAS searching for my two ambitions: Game Design and Book Illustration. I hadn't even realised you could do Game Art as a degree! I'd been planning on trying to get my foot in the door after finishing an illustration degree. I phoned round for some open days and suddenly life seemed a lot better.
As you can guess, I had an open day and interview at DMU and got on the course.


So why did I write all that? I don't think I've forgotten since I've been here that I have battled through a course that I truly didn't enjoy, and where I didn't learn what I wanted. Here I have felt settled and like I belong on the course, something I never felt on my foundation. I've also learned a lot, and it was stuff I was expecting and hoping to learn. So basically I am grateful for what I have here, which is something to keep in mind when reading my whiny complaints!

So do I have any suggestions for next year? Well I felt that the first project really flung us in at the deep end. While it did make us learn quickly, it was also pretty stressful. I know that Joel did his best with so many people who had no idea what they were doing, but I think we could have done with more one on one help. So for the sake of the next first years, I'm going to suggest a buddy system. Teaching other people how to do things that we already know how to do will ease the stress on Joel, help the first years feel more accepted and also re-enforce what we know.
Also having PCs that don't die every few minutes would be wonderful. We were all so impressed with their shiny newness at the start of the year but now you're lucky if half of them will run Max.
Other than that I feel like the 3DS Max stuff has been going well. I've really enjoyed making the street furniture and trees because you can see how it's directly relevant and ready for a game environment. There have been grumbles that it isn't interesting enough but we have to be able to walk before we can run. Group work should be interesting for next year, and maybe for after Easter if people still want to model animals from the zoo.

As I said before I've been really enjoying the drawing module. I surprised myself at the tutorial with just how much I've done. 3 full sketchbooks, one A5 sketchbook from the zoo and a big fat texture book. As well as a hand, wire man, chimney and arcade cabinets.
The formal drawing lessons have been really useful and not something that I've really had before. I had picked up various rules and tricks but the perspective stuff really helped. Shame we didn't get round to colour theory. That would be nice for next year.
I'd love for there to be more focus on the hand made 3D stuff next year, I've felt like it's been really beneficial. More time with Chris in classes would also be really good. I know he wants to be a full time tutor and I think it'd be really useful for us to have his direct input on our 3DS Max work.
I'd love if we could have our own studio space where we could work. I'm running out of space for all my 3D junk and my room is littered with the results of my artistic experiments.

The blogs have become a lot more fun for me, and I think I'll do my best to keep them up. God knows what Mr P thinks of all my days/ nights out but I like posting about them. It's a fun way to communicate with everyone and it's far better than essays would be. It would be nice if the blog tasks would link more closely with the lectures we have but I know that's not always possible because people are unpredictable.

The lectures have been really interesting and have provoked a lot of discussion. I think the inclusive gaming was probably the most hard hitting one for me because it made me analyse my own habits and preferences and examine what they're affected by.

I think I'd like to comment on the amount of notice we get for some stuff. In my experience Art departments are always slightly shaky on the organisation front. Deadlines and criteria changing, sudden field trips, unexpected tutorials, and timetable mess ups have all been annoying simply because they are all so preventable. Notices on the VLE would solve most of it.

Finally, the VLE itself. Could be a very useful tool but people just don't really check it now apart from for briefs and project deadlines. At the start of the year it had a bustling forum which has now sadly stagnated. Perhaps having a link to a separate Vbulletin messageboard or similar might be better?

Wow, the final blog task is pretty hard.

I've had a pretty cool week this week, Tim's been down, we've all finally viewed a house, played drunken guitar hero, saw 300, had a smoothie from the nice milkshake place in town and eaten chinese food. It seems far too early for the term to be over.

Plans for easter:


Catch up with all my friends from home.
Dress up like a pirate and go boating on a lake with my friends. Did this last year and it was brilliant.
Work for playschemes. It's basically a day camp for kids during the holidays. We do stuff like ourdoor sports, art and craft, drama, whatever. It makes you never want to have kids. EVER. Ah but the money is good.
Go round London lots and lots. Enjoy the extortionate prices, stupid tourists and tube bogies.
Go to Turkey. Oh god I need a holiday this will be sooooo nice if it happens.
Maybe some work will fit in there somewhere.

Have you ever wondered what would happen if your life took another direction? If at some point in your life you made a decision that changed how you are today? This may sound like it's going to become all philosophical and deep, but it really isn't. It's just an excuse to post pictures of me dressed as a chav.
For those of you who don't know what I look like or need reminding here is a photo of me and Tim, who for some reason looks like a ska musician:

And here is a photo of our bizarro universe chav counterparts. We were actually very scared of one another for a while that night, especially when Tim decided to name himself Darren, or 'Daz' and continually ask people 'if they were startin'?!' .Someone actually told us that we were so convincing that if they saw us in the street they would cross the road. High praise indeed.
So in conclusion I'm glad I'm not a chav.

All Hail the Zoo!

I went to the zoo today along with Caz, Alex, Nikki, James and Joel. Getting there and back was quite an effort as we had to get a train to Nuneaton and then a bus which only came once an hour and took an hour to wind its way through the countryside to the zoo. But it was definitely worth it. We got the bus fare and zoo ticket together for just £6.50 which was a nice surprise, and we all took tons of photos and did loads of drawing.
Quote of the day:
Alex: 'I only eat solid waste.'

The whole idea of this is to model loads of fun animals and make a first person mauler, where they all run around slicing/ goring/ trampling each other to pieces. Should be fun!

Week 22: Games Design Conference

I had free rein on this one so I just decided to look around the site until I found something that sparked my interest. This lecture looks really interesting, about knowing your target demographic and knowing who plays games. It seems similar to the lecture we had about inclusive gaming, if you make a game more inclusive, it will appeal to more people and therefore have more potential sales. This part in the description especially interested me:
"Analyze This! - Players Live On Stage" a live player study on the Wii provides insights into players' minds.

It's incredible when you think about it how many different ways people will come up with to play the same game. This is especially apparent in multiplayer versus modes, where different tactics will have different advantages. When we play Lord of the Rings in the lab, we all seem to have settled in to our chosen races. If there is a choice, I am usually Goblins, Tom the Elves, Sophia the Men, Alex the Dwarves and Darsh Mordor.
I prefer the Goblins because I can make lots of mountain giants, big rock throwers, and then spam cheap basic units to act as a meat shield for them. But why do I like to play like this? I could easily go a different route, but yet I don't. Why do I play the way I do?

What kind of factors most affect how we play games? Is it to do with our personalities? How we solve problems in real life situations? How we've played games before? I'm not offering any answers because I can't go to the lecture but it's interesting to think about.

Another slight tangent I went on from the lecture description was here. Facts and statistics about computer games and who buys and plays them. The pie charts for the best selling genres really surprised me. Action and sports games had the highest percentages for console games and strategy and children's games for PC games. If you'd asked me what I thought sold most I probably would have said shooters and maybe racing. But is that because I'm currently in an environment where those genres are more popular? Lots of people play CoD and Gears of War in the lab and any adverts on TV tend to be more shooter and racing game orientated, although I have seen some for Final Fantasty XII and Wario Ware.