Task 1
Strengths and Weaknesses
Strengths:
Throughout my time producing work on this course I have realized that one of my strengths is the ability to remain consistent in producing my work as I have so far been successful in hitting every deadline on time without the quality or quantity of my work diminishing. Another strength I have is my ability to produce extensive annotations that consistently contain relevant information to the image I am discussing and do not contain a large quantity of words for the sake of quantity as I have been able to prioritize quality overall other aspects of my work.
Another advantage that I hold is my skill in 2D Art in which I have been able to produce many art pieces for course work as well as my own personal projects and practice sessions. This skill includes my ability to focus on what I am drawing as well as being able to fully visualize the outline of an image in my mind before taking to the canvas whilst another being my technique of adding detail which helps me to create realistic looking and interesting designs that each hold a unique appearance to each of them.
One advantage that goes with the others that I possess includes my planning technique which I began utilizing during the production of my FMP that allowed me to hit realistic weekly goals for my production phase and prevented me from being overwhelmed from assigning myself to many tasks as I had done on previous units before this one. This planning technique is one of the main perks that enabled me to hit the deadline on time whilst maintaining confidence in myself and procuring a satisfying series of art pieces for presentation.
My biggest achievement so far has being able to produce a creative art piece revolving around a centralized theme within a specific genre that I have chosen to produce it in.
A professional quality that I have is being able to meet deadlines on time whilst remaining consistent with my written work as well as my art products whilst being able to keep improving them and making appropriate edits up until the final deadline so that I get the best result possible. Another professional quality I possess is being able to produce interesting and realistic looking characters whilst being skilled in the use of sketching with a graphics tablet and holding knowledge of the functions available to use on Photoshop that can be utilized to improve an image or make changes.
An aspect of my work that I have done well is my extensive paragraphs and annotations as I have made all of what I have said relevant to the subject matter at hand including information as to what decisions I have made, why I made them, what I like about my work and what I think I can improve on.
Weaknesses:
Whilst I do possess a series of advantages there are also disadvantages that I have alongside my skills the first of these being my inability to produce a realistic or interesting image by drawing from memory as throughout my course work and personal drawing sessions I have been relying heavily on references and although these are common for every artist to use I do have a wish to gain experience in being able to create an image of my own without any visual aides asides from what I can see in my mind.
An additional disadvantage for myself is my sketching process as the proportions I draw for my characters come out initially as clumsy, flimsy and overall can be viewed as a stick man drawing which does not help further my design process but instead hinders me and causes annoyance which I must learn to stifle.
Another disadvantage I have is my own lack of confidence as despite my creation of designs in past and present that have come out reasonably well I still feel as if I rush to the drawing process and don’t take enough time to study the anatomy and structure of my product before sketching it which makes my drawing not look as good as it could if I were to spend more time producing an initial outline.
A root that stems from some of my failures is my ability to get easily distracted as once I begin typing/producing work I sometimes find it difficult to maintain focus on the task at hand and can find myself drifting off or blankly look around attempting to find inspiration that will encourage me to continue on with the assignment.
Tasks that I usually avoid doing include the extensive research of drawing techniques as well as creating silhouettes as I normally jump straight to producing the outline without procuring any initial designs except for those created solely for practicing with proportions and do not serve to inspire my creative thought.
From the advantages and disadvantages that I have listed about myself for this task I can see that I hold an optimistic yet critical view over the work I have produced as I can clearly see what I have and have not done well and have gone to full extent to critique myself in areas where I am strong and weak. This shows my honesty towards my own abilities as I do not overestimate myself whilst also not devaluing myself by any great amount as my mindset will allow me to focus on ridding myself of these disadvantages and replacing them with advantages that will lead to me being able to produce more professional art pieces in the tasks to come for this course. This list allows me to learn what improvements about myself I need to make whilst also presenting me with abilities that I possess and despite already being aware of my skill set to be able to critique and list these down greatly increases my understanding of my own strengths allowing me to learn more about my abilities in this line of work. A lesson I have learnt about myself from this task is that I need to lesson the distractions in my environment and be able to apply myself to the task at hand more with an increased amount of focus whilst another lesson to be learnt is that I must start producing more initial sketches for each project and work on this in my own time. Overall this list teaches me to be honest with myself and spend more time practicing on personal projects in areas where I have a disadvantage from what I have learnt about myself in this session.
Skills Audit
https://docs.google.com/document/d/12PAW4abwumI-rit4960ecLLbM-EwDOBJYIdKO9bRTjY/edit
This link contains the document featuring my skills audit where I have identified my own skills and abilities, I have listed my education and all my personal skills and technology skills.
Level 3 Games Development Spencer Lee 