Reflective Post

While I still have some blogposts left to write, the semester is essentially over and there are no more exercises or days to cram into it. With that here is my reflective post:

--
The brief says that the reflective post must explore and evaluate my methodology throughout these months, and so I will try to do that - as can be read from some of my posts, I did not start the semester on the best foot, namely not really receiving the verbal instructions/inspirations for the first couple of tasks, or at the very least, being unable to ask questions regarding them as they were set. Additionally, I was not in a very good place emotionally. I write this because I believe that the semester was an intense mental struggle, and being behind from the offset didn't help. I struggled to find my place, and to truly figure out what it was I wanted to focus on, because I wanted it all - game design, illustration, digital painting, character and level design, modelling, animation and so forth, but there was no time to do anything. Looking at the art provided by the other students was inspiring as well as disheartening, and I berated myself for not having practiced as much as they, and being unable to perform even the simplest tasks. I took the easy way and decided to focus on game design rather than art, something you can't really do "poorly" but, and this was perhaps because of the way I presented it, I did not feel as if I was doing the correct thing, and this was a bit disheartening as well.
As I detailed in one of the other posts I think, at times it felt like an actual fight to start working, due to it being a kind of unpleasant process. It is a strange type of discipline and confidence, and I read a lot online about that kind of loop and how to exit it. One of the great titbits I am now trying to convince myself of is to never compare my art to others, only to my own previous art. Additionally, a long process has been about not being so hard on myself, and I think attempting to stick to a set schedule, work-wise, could really help - for example, after 7 at night, never do any work, and forcibly not thinking about it either, in order to relax and recover.

As it stands now, I have gone back to the roots, art-wise, and am attempting to make simple drawing exercises a habit. I am hoping this will both bring increased confidence and of course lay a solid foundation for completing art-goals. I have also planned a "tutorial-Tuesday", wherein I each week would do a tutorial - long or short - and hopefully learning from a range of different artists would congeal into something a bit wider and more solid. Additionally, at the end of the semester I found renewed vigour in working on a game of my own - this might have been due to a set deadline for it, but it did mean that I got a lot of work done and was happy with myself for once. I will try to complete more work on game projects I will actually release, or try to encorporate exercises for class into them. (Word count: 527)
--

There is more to cover but the post can only be so long. If it feels a bit scattered then that's because that is how I felt like. The stuff that was actually focused were the exercises I have detailed.

Here's to a better next semester!