Hello.

Hello and welcome to my Honours blog!

I'm a 2D generalist studying Computer Arts at Abertay University who enjoys all aspects of 2D art, from concept art to icon design. By the end of this year I aim to have a polished enough skill set in this field to become a 2D artist in game development.

Over the past year or so I've worked on several projects under a variety of role titles, all pertaining to 2D art, so I figured I'd start this blog off by talking about them a little bit.

In 2013 I worked on a B-Movie themed endless runner game called “Attack of the Ghastly Grey Matter” for the game development competition Dare to be Digital. As part of a team of five (two programmers and three artists) we developed the game for Android devices over the course of eight weeks. My responsibilities included creating the GUI, feedback animation and promotional artwork. As it was the first game I'd ever worked on and the first time I'd ever delved in to creating UI, it was really challenging and not without issues but I feel being thrown in at the deep end was a great way for me to start learning. We released the game on Google Play in September 2013 and it has since amassed over 10 000 downloads. The game was also nominated for a Scottish BAFTA New Talent Award this year.

In third year as part of the Professional Project module on our course I worked as the environment artist on “Escape Nebula,” a sci-fi themed platformer for Android devices. We went for a cartoony cel shaded art style with modular background assets. Though the modular assets and art style were time efficient to produce (which is ace considering how hectic third year is!) I personally feel that in retrospect my art looks a bit flat and lacks charm. Perhaps the conception more ideas and working in a different art style would have solved this. However the project was great for developing my experience in creating cel shaded art.

In the second semester of third year I took on an additional project to replace an artist who had left another team. I worked as the GUI and environment artist on “Ubiquity” - a top down, sci-fi themed puzzle game for PS Vita. It was really difficult managing my studies with this extra project (and my Abertay Game Development Society project!) and working in a vector art style (which I'd had little experience with at the time) however I feel my time management and work flow in Adobe Illustrator have significantly improved because of it. After the semester ended, four of us (two programmers, the animator/character artist and myself) decided we wanted to take the game further so over summer the guys worked on revamping the game and showed it off at Dare Protoplay festival in August. As I was already working over summer there was little I could do other than some logo design and “polished placeholders” however we'll be working on the newly re-titled “Duality” over the course of this year as part of Game Development Society. We're also still keeping in contact with the game company Futurlab (who supplied our student brief for the project) along the way as the IP of the game belongs to them.

Finally, this summer I had the fantastic opportunity to work as the 2D artist on game designer Sophia George's game “Strawberry Thief” for iOS which was designed as part of her residency at the Victoria and Albert museum. Obviously this was a really art heavy game (so much fun to work on) and trying to recreate William Morris' Strawberry Thief pattern (and all it's arts and crafts asymmetry) as a repeatable texture was really interesting. Likewise was the challenge of creating promotional artwork and menu screens which honoured his works in the digital form of a game. I worked closely with the animator on the project who brought these textures to life in game and also co-designed HUD elements with him. We showed off the game at Dare Protoplay Festival in August and will be releasing Strawberry Thief on the App Store soon!

I've also had some experience in character design as part of other modules and personal projects however character animation, or rather animation in general, is a skill of mine which is severely lacking.

 In general, I feel my art is not where I want it to be right now – my perspective, lighting, digital painting, anatomy, environment art and ability to create artwork of quality in a short period of time – are all no where near where I want them to be. I'm going to have to really push myself this year if I want to achieve a professional level by the time I graduate! It's going to be tough but I feel like with enough determination and dedication I can do it.

So that's enough rambling about previous projects now, in my next post I'll talk about ideas for my Honours Project!