Author: sneal1

This semester was probably my least challenging semester at St. Edwards. I feel like my time management skills have definitely improved, especially with having a part-time job along with my classes and extracurriculars. My art has been getting better which is, of course, great. Art can only improve as long as one practices constantly. Overall, though finals are still to come, I would say this has been an easy and progressive semester thus far, and I’m hoping future semesters will be a similar experience. The course was fun and was a great learning experience as well for a visual studies major such as myself.

The faculty presentations last Monday were, for the most part, pretty interesting. However, I didn’t necessarily feel connected with the faculty members’ art simply because it was mediums of art I am uninterested in, especially the minimalist art. Bill’s photo manipulation art stood out the most, it was definitely very interesting and unique, and he took a very creative and original approach to his work. The clay work was very impressive. However, I’m not necessarily interested in ceramics, mainly because I’m pretty mediocre at it, but it’s a very impressive craft nonetheless. The only art I wasn’t impressed with was the minimalist art. Sure many minimalist pieces most likely have a deep meaning behind them and serve a greater purpose, but otherwise, they look like they take no time whatsoever. It’s most likely just me being ignorant, but I’ve never seen the point in minimalist art mainly because a great majority of it, in my eyes, is pretty unattractive. Nonetheless, the instructor was very passionate about her art and I can definitely respect her for that.

5 Year Plan:

For the next two years I will be going through a variety of IGST classes, so I am definitely excited to garner more experience in game development. In addition, I will continue to work on art on the side, and get internships mainly for art or programming (hopefully) in the process. After graduating college I will most likely start as a QA Tester at a smaller gaming business and eventually work my way up to be a character designer/concept artist. My ultimate goal is to create a game I can call my own using my own art for the visuals. How I’ll reach that point is probably a long journey ahead, but as long as I keep working hard at my art and work through the game developer process step by step, I’m confident that it will happen eventually.

It was awesome to have developers from Spacetime Studios talk to the class. I personally have not played any of their games, but they were interesting to learn about. In addition, I learned a lot about how the game industry works and the respective roles contained in the workforce. The role I was most interested in was, of course, the artist. The artists that spoke to us presented the different types of art applications one should practice with beforehand, mainly Maya and Photoshop, and that the most important thing to have when presenting oneself to a business is a personal portfolio. No matter how cartoony the company, always present your best and most realistic work to show the height of what you can achieve, even if the company does not demand it.

Possible Question for Nov. 14 Lecture: How early were you inspired to enter your respective field and what has been your favorite part of being an artist as a career?

Matt Lankes Presentation:

I have to say that I applaud Matt Lankes’ work. I could tell he had a great passion for his work, and it was cool to see all the different people he has met throughout his career. Of course the most interesting project he engaged in was Boyhood, and seeing how good the movie was, his team’s 12 years of filming really paid off. Though I’m mostly interested in landscape photography, I respect his passion in taking portraits of people.

Possible Internships:

Character Artist at Bioware:

https://career4.successfactors.com/sfcareer/jobreqcareer?jobId=105441&company=EA&username=

Blizzard Art:

http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/careers/roles/art-animation.html

Blizzard Design:

https://blizzard.taleo.net/careersection/2/jobdetail.ftl?job=16000WB&src=JB-1052

 

Reflecting on the lectures from last Monday’s seminar, I would love to study abroad if possible, preferably in Japan. However, the only study abroad opportunities I find interesting based on location, all seem to collaborate with certain majors outside of IGST and visual studies in general. Then again, I definitely have not looked into it as much as I should. I definitely am interested though. Getting a perspective on different world societies by actually experiencing them in real life would definitely help widen my knowledge of various perspectives people express worldwide. Which could be very good for story telling and character personality design. Interacting with friends, people in my extracurriculars including Jazz Band and APO, family, and people in general is always an opportunity to acquire new knowledge in story writing and creating various personalities.

That being said, for my future job I mainly want to delve in character designs for video games. However, if possible, I’d love to engage in story writing and creating character personalities. Though art is my main focus as a career, writing for the sake of invoking emotion from an audience is also something I love. Of course I can do the same using visual art, but using words to invoke emotion is just as effective, and it would help me to become well-rounded across multiple mediums.

 

 

Abbas Deidehan

Though his presentation had a lot of technical difficulties, Abbas had a lot of cool work to show off. His work seemed to be freelancing with various companies such as Kind Bar and Brisk. and working all around in visual media work. I can’t say I necessarily relate to his line of work, but it was very neat to learn about his various processes nonetheless. As an alumni basically straight out of college, it was amazing to see how far he’s gone with his work already, and it shows that he definitely has the passion to drive his crafting.

Camille Dollins

Camille’s Lucine idea was very innovative. The idea of developing a care package for stress relief is extremely thoughtful of her. I’m glad to hear that her product sold better than expected because with how much work she put into it, one could tell she put a lot of love into it. Though, I can not relate to her line of work either, as I want to work with Video Games. However I do appreciate her beautiful drawings used for her coloring books, which was the product she seemed most passionate about.

Skills Inventory:

1. My greatest strengths in Drawing I include: Extensive practice in drawing, a keen eye for detail, a gentle and steady hand with a pencil, experience is practicing value and perspective.
2. For greater success in this course, I need to: Practice for a few hours on a daily basis,  have more patience with larger drawings, focus on developing my concentration and finishing one drawing before starting another.

1. My greatest strengths in American Experience include: Proactively taking notes in the margins when reading and having patience with studying.
2. For greater success in this course, I need to: Review my notes more instead of simply taking them and looking them over once.

1. My greatest strengths in Video Game History include: Keeping up with the homework assignments and having a genuine interest in the study of video games (as I am an IGST major).
2. For greater success in this course, I need to: Pay more attention to directions in assignments. I usually do not have trouble following the directions for assignments, but in a couple of cases I have had a few points docked due to misinterpreting the instructions.

1. My greatest strengths in Computing Science Concepts I include: Having an interest in learning and exploring different forms of coding and high grades on assignments despite the difficulty.
2. For greater success in this course, I need to: It’s very easy to get tripped up in coding because there are so many opportunities for error. I need to work on focusing when typing code as it can completely fall apart from one mistype.

1. My greatest strengths in Digital Media and Management include: Thoroughly reading which has resulted in above average scores on assessments and an interest in current events which allows for more engaging in class discussions.
2. For greater success in this course, I need to: Read more thoroughly in order to achieve even better scores on assessments.

Computer skills:

1. My computer skills include: Experience in Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint, basic knowledge of coding in Python, and basic Adobe Creative Suite experience (Photoshop, After Effects, Flash, etc.)
2. I still need to learn: It would be extremely useful to learn html coding, which I’m sure will be included in a class later down the road. Besides html I think i should focus on improving the skill set I have developed already, in order to have advanced or intermediate knowledge in those areas rather than basic.

Research & writing skills:

1. My greatest strengths as a researcher/writer include: Having a passion for writing (though mainly for creative as opposed to analytical) and ability to find and utilize necessary information from sources.
2. I need to work on these aspects of research and writing: Writing more than one draft on most papers is something I need to improve on. I usually create one draft and revise it as I go. I think working on creating a rough draft or two then a final draft would definitely have improved past papers that could have been much better grades.
3. I learn best & accomplish most when: When I learn from things visually, have clear instructions on how to tackle the task at hand, when I can find an area (such as my room) to sit down, focus, and lose myself in my work.

Action Plan:

The class I believe could use the most improvement is Computing Science and Concepts I. I’m not necessarily doing “bad” in that class, but definitely not as well as in the rest of my courses.

Steps for Improvement:

1. Memorizing different operators, coding tools and other techniques in order to pull them from memory rather than looking through notes.
2. Paying closer attention to assigned readings.
3. Allowing more time to study and prepare for class assessments.
4. Asking questions and participating in discussion more frequently.
5. Practicing coding outside of class.
6. More attentive note-taking rather than only taking notes straight from the PowerPoints.
7. Meeting with the professor in office hours to ask for advice on studying for assessments.
8. Practicing mock assignment provided by the textbook outside of classwork and homework.
9. Practicing different methods of coding in order to achieve similar results, as there is likely more than one way to achieve a goal when coding.
10. Discussing or meeting with classmates to better improve my understanding of whatever topic(s) we are currently focusing on in class.

Line Art From Shadows:

1. The goal of this assignment was to take a sculpture we had made ( in my case out of wire), place it under a light, and trace a picture from the shadow created by it. We then integrated various line art into the picture using different mediums including marker, pen and pencil.
2. The shadow created a sort of blooming effect. From the image projected by the shadow, I created a picture resembling a blooming flower using the different line-arts to decorate the petals. The image turned out much greater than I had imagined and it’s probably the project I’m most proud of having created so far in college.

Room in One-Point Perspective

1. For this project we were supposed to draw a picture of any room in one-point perspective. I had never really practiced perspective before this project so this one was pretty challenging.
2. I found a room that had plenty of furniture online by searching IKEA rooms on google. This one stood out the most because of the shelves, the large cushion in the front, and the room in the back. I made a rough sketch in order to get an idea of drawing the picture, then eventually went to work on the larger product. I set a vanishing point in the middle of the picture and then drew lines originating from the point in order to align and create the rest of the furniture. The lines on the floor were definitely the most patience-trying thing about the picture.

 

Part 2:

Room in One-Point Perspective:

1. I would say the strongest aspect of the picture is how well-aligned all of the furniture is. The couch slants slightly and one of the shelves is longer than it should be but otherwise I think the alignment turn out pretty decent.
2. I would definitely say the weakest aspect is how light the picture is. I definitely could have taken more time to shade and darken edges but I hadn’t noticed until I actually presented it in my Drawing I class.
3. the picture could be strengthened conceptually by adding in more small details in order to make the room look more realistic, such as marks on the wood floor and more shading.
4. The picture could be much darker which would help bring out the image instead of having to squint to see it.
5. This my first time drawing a large room and frankly I am very pleased with it. I hope to draw many more in the future as my future occupation will definitely call for it.

 

Upper Classmen Presentations:

Faith: Faith’s pictures were absolutely beautiful and I believe she is a passionate photographer. The delicately framed pictures definitely showed the care she puts into her work, and her website was very clean cut and organized. Despite her nervousness I believe she has the best presentation of the upperclassmen because her immense amount of pictures clearly shows how proactive she is. In addition, her Thailand pictures, especially her ones of monkeys and trees, looked very professional.

Mary: Similar to Faith, Mary seemed very proactive in her line of work. She seemed experienced in working with other businesses working as a design intern, which is definitely a plus seeing that she has professional experience. her designs were simple and cute, but one could also tell they had time put into them for how clean cut they were. Having her hand drawn art used in her designs was a nice touch as well. She also seemed very passionate with her work. I definitely could have seen her being a lot more passionate presenting, but she seemed pretty nervous. However, the passion was definitely present.

Diana: Even though she had stated she is looking to be an art teacher, she still seemed pretty unsure about her craft. her presentation made it seem as if she still in the exploration phase of figuring out which art medium exactly she wishes to explore. Of course, art teachers usually explore multiple mediums with their students, in her case especially with her students being children, so she seems to be on the right track. She did have outside experience so that’s always a plus. However, it would have been better to see more professional work or independent projects rather than just class projects.

John & Omar: Being an IGST major, I was most looking forward to this presentation. However, the presentation seemed pretty underwhelming. I feel as if what they explained in their presentation is only a portion of what the IGST curriculum has to offer. I’m sure they’ve done more work outside of what they showed, as it only seemed to be smaller projects. The projects were impressive nonetheless, I guess I just expected a lot more. Such as in animation with games, I expect we’ll be doing a lot more than just learning how to roll a 3D ball into boards to knock them over. They did show a couple of games that seemed pretty simple, but this is also coming from someone who has just been introduced to coding this semester so I may be expecting too much. Regardless, I eagerly look forward to what the major has to offer, and I believe their presentation was a good preview to the major itself by giving a general idea of what is to come.

 

Website:

http://www.rleonardi.com/interactive-resume/

Probably my favorite online resume I have seen yet. Robby Leonardi made his resume/website into an interactive 2D side-scrolling game which displays his core skills in terms of stats. The interface is very clean-cut and I absolutely love how it looks. Definitely the most inspiring of the online gaming portfolios I’ve seen.

http://sodano.daportfolio.com

I definitely love this portfolio because it’s a portfolio for 2D video game art, which is what i hope to do as a career. His art is very clean and it definitely shows that he has experience in his craft.

http://www.katieorcutt.com

Her portfolio is very entertaining with small sketches and comics to show her art. Her art style isn’t necessarily what I’m interested in, but it looks very nice nonetheless.

http://markferrari.com/art/

Very beautifully organised portfolio. The colors used for the portfolio are very appealing and it’s very well organised with a lot of options to explore. Mark has gorgeous landscape art (which is something I hope to develop on myself).

 

From researching various pieces of 21st Century contemporary art, the one I personally found the most interesting was “Half the air in a given space” by Martin Creed, an musician and artist born in Britain. This is Creed’s 360th piece which served as an installation in 2012 in the Cleveland Museum of Art that involved placing a large amount of white balloons in order to take up about half the given space in said rooms. The piece was also installed later on using different colors of balloons including blue, silver and purple. While the piece looks to be a mass of balloons, it represents a crowded space around the audience members, yet the crowded space still contains air inside the balloons. The balloons seems to represent coexistence as, even though they are making the space very limited, they are not a bother to those experiencing the installation. Creed shows excellence with this piece as he shows, as with most of his other works, that seemingly boring piece of art can hold a much deeper meaning that viewers must ponder n order to formulate on their own. Another interesting aspect of this piece is that it does not only serve as a physical piece for visual appeal, but also provides an experience to its audience members. People must navigate through the balloons in order to make their way around the rooms, and thus are physically interacting with the piece. How they choose to interact with it is up to the audience members themselves.

More information about this piece can be found in the articles below:

https://www.clevelandart.org/blog/2012/09/11/coming-soon-contemporary-art-installation-martin-creed

https://henryart.org/exhibitions/martin-creed-work-no-360-half-the-air-in-a-given-space#page-navigation-overview

http://artdaily.com/news/57718/Martin-Creed-s–Work-No–965–Half-the-air-in-a-given-space–acquired-by-the-Cleveland-Museum-of-Art#.V-lfuVeq7FI