Introduction:

I am making a narrative base point and click RPG game. Creative nature fantasy world visuals and mini games are the anchor. I am passionate about character design while also interested in environmental design and audio design, music. I aspire to work full time position at a game company.

Jamie Blacknell

Jamie Blacknell is a past student of University of Southampton, graduated with first class honours in games design and art degree. He is now an experienced professional developer devoted to creating games of different spectrum. 

One of my favorite and relatable projects of his is “Portage: a Mindful Journey”, it is a relaxing 2D pixel art experiencing game, which is similar to my ideal game concept. 

About “Portage: a Mindful Journey”, it is a subtle interaction focused on experiencing a game set in the boreal forest, where players travel from islands to islands. Players are able to explore the calming nature environment, and collect paraldoids of animals they see throughout the journey, there is even a fishing minigame for more interaction.  “The game is designed to encourage mindful behavior through subtle interactions that require you to focus on the moment.”Jamie Blacknell mentioned in his personal website. His project gave me an idea of including subtle interactions in my gameplay. My strengths are 2D character design and environmental design. I would like to demonstrate more of my illustration skills in my game. After his sharing, I elaborated my idea with his and I think a narrative based game with mini games would be a good gameplay option for my working practice. 

I also appreciate Jamie Blacknell’s opinion towards portfolio suggestions, he suggested that we should avoid adding work that I am not interested in onto portfolios. Employers will like to see work that I am passionate about. I absolutely agree with this statement, quantity does not equal quality. Filling up my portfolio with non specialized work will not make me sound like an allrounder, instead, it misrepresents my creative direction.I will cause trouble if I get hired from skills that I’m not even good at, I will get struggle at work and I will lose my enthusiastic in my job so quickly, it turns out negatively affect my long term growth.

Jamie Blacknell’s thoughts towards job opportunities are very applicable, he mentioned that the game design inductee is competitive, many of us think there are artists who develop more interesting games than us, and we are impossible to compete with them, but it is actually a dangerous way of thinking and is not true. I used to think I was not going to have an opportunity to work in the gaming industry due to the competitive environment. Those are understandable worries for a graduating student but I should move on instead of overthink.Jamie recommended us to treasure our soft skills, and be confident with our talents, in order to overcome my worries towards career opportunities, I need to strengthen my soft skills and rebuild my confidence, such as doing more research and experiments to boost my creativity and learn more programming software to make myself compatible. Also, I should always be open minded to opportunities, value all working chances, regardless of the size of the company or the salaries they offer. Stepping into the game industry is stepping into a learning journey. I should see every practice as a valuable experience. 

My fail attempt on unity :((

It was me trying to input a 360 degree photo on a sphere using unity. I searched up an online tutorial “Virtual Tour Using Sphere with Unity” and followed the tutorial step by step. Unfortunately, it was a video 5 years ago and Unity has updated a lot of details, the unity I was accessing with was not the same as the tutorial. After an hour of struggle, a little demo at the corner of the page is all I can demonstrate. However, the failed attempt did not discourage me, I will ask teachers and peers to help with my unity learning!

Rhys Shepherd 

Rhys Shepherd is a technical artist, he is now working in an AAA game company “Epic games” and participated in the production of the famous game “fortine”. His journey in game design is encouraging and tells a meaningful story of self discovery.

The key to this artist’s success is his courage of attempting and seeing frustrations as experience. He had worked as a QA tester, a junior programmer, a designer then a technical artist.He didn’t doubt himself or view his experiences as failures, but rather treat them as experience in the industry and was grateful about that. In fact, he was carrying all of these working experiences with him as he applied for his job transition, leaving him always well prepared to search for a journey in another company. It inspired me not to be discouraged by wrong attempts at jobs that do not suit me, as they are necessary paths for self discovery. 

Rhys Shepherd has the ability to discover environments that he actually enjoys by joining companies with different scales. He joined a popular game company “22 Cans” as a junior programmer, a position in which he can create games and use unity professionally, but due to 22 Cans’ competitive environment, it was a challenging job. Rhys also mentioned he needed to self-taught everything and was feeling stressful and so he left after 3 months. Rhys then changed to an indie game studio as an artist + designer. Compared to his previous job, it was a more art focused role and less stressful working, unfortunately, their studio went out of funding so he had to leave. 

From his experience, I learnt there are pros and cons for small and large scale companies. Indie game studios have a more elastic workload as they are small team focused, teams can set deadlines based on different teammates’ capability, but there will be a risk of lack of funding so they lose their jobs. AAA companies are more stable, but stressful and competitive. I would only have the ability to understand my ideal work environment once I have experienced both AAA companies and indie studios, since each has its own working style, only firsthand experience could help me acknowledge what suits me best. To make this happen, I should apply to many positions. If the role is not right, I could leave, but I will never get the chance if I do not create opportunities for myself. 

After Rhys Shepherd shared his game design journey, he introduced a variety of roles in game production and I found interest in audio making, because I feel that sound effects and background music are essential to delivering atmosphere and emotions for narrative based games. Before studying game design, I was a grade 6 flute student and have passed my music theory exam with merit, I am confident to contribute to the audio design on my project. The setting of my story is within a nature fantasy world, I think a dolce classical music will suit it. I am using a software called “MuseScore” to create a sound effect demo.

My 6 seconds BGM demo

I included three parts for this music, 1st flute, 2nd flute and harp. The 1st flute and harp are the same melody and the 2nd flute is harmonizing them. 

Olivia Gregory

Olivia Gregory is a Concept & Visual Development Artist, she is specialized in props and environment design. On the other hand, she has been working in Chapel art studio, and is passionate about helping people with disabilities through creativity. She integrates these ideas into game design and operates special systems for those characters which makes her creativity valuable. 

I learnt that the key of concept art is to deliver information.Concept art needs to show what those characters, environment and weapons are gonna be like in the game. For example, we need to include anatomy, turn arounds, texture callouts of clothes for character designs, orthographics for environment design to show more information through different angles of the environment or props design. Also, we should be aware to keep our processes clean and show all the processes of our work as game productions are usually teams, other artists may need to handle our work. It immediately applied to my current project work. I first came up with a bobbin lace game idea, and did a few concept art of my prototype and character. Surprisingly, I had an opportunity to work with another classmate and we got to handle our work with each other. With keeping all the processes of our work ,we were able to distribute tasks effectively and refine the details.   

There are few tips Oliva Gregory suggested we should be aware of in our portfolio. First, only one art style for one project. We should avoid using different art styles in the same project, something like using semi-realistic art style for character designs and suddenly change to low poly art for environment design, or else people don’t understand what is going on when they look into our portfolio. Second, avoid putting different color palettes into the same design, it is not helpful to demonstrate what we can do technically. On the other hand, based on Oliva’s personal experience, most companies would like to see artists who have the ability to showcase various art styles, but protracting information is the most important in concept art, we should focus on presenting our strength and express our passion towards creativity. This information is exclusive and I found it really helpful. I used to think I needed to include the process of my finished projects and some artwork that I am proud of in my portfolio, now I learn there are many things I need to be aware of, such as work with different color is not seen as different design, avoid include repetitive work and demonstrate different art styles in different projects for better understanding.    

Olivia Gregory’s portfolio work

I was really curious about this artist as she shares a similar preference towards game design with me. Her portfolio showcased excellent environment design, character and weapon design concept artwork, but she is not really into technical work which I find relatable.I enjoy making concept art more than programming stuff and I wish I could work more on concept art. To make this happen,I should have a basic understanding of common programming softwares, make sure I have the ability to navigate them to present my ideas, creativity. At the same time, I need to master design fundamentals by practicing on perspective drawing, shape language and more.       

On practice of shape language and perspective drawing, before I decided to work in pairs, I came up with an idea of a handcraft x nature fantasy world and made a character based on the structure of a spider.

My character concept art

I would like to make this character a villain, so I exaggerated the sharpness of spider legs elements, to show she is rose with throes. About her facial expression, she smiles with her eyebrows frowned. I wanted to portray her as a villain who acts nice at first, but cannot hide her twisted personality ultimately.   

Oliva shared about her experience of being a freelancer in the art industry, and I found them helpful for students who want to enter a game company as well. She mentioned that networking is important especially for art and freelance communities. She suggested we can connect with people from the creative industries through volunteering at art events. Attending events is beneficial in general, not only we can go to events for free and gain experience by taking part, we also get to reach out to art students or even art professionists. I agree that people may find our work interesting and like to invite us to work with them. Taking a step out and connecting with people could create opportunities for ourselves.

Bea Grove

Bea Grove has 7 years game industry experience, she is now a senior game designer and manager of a famous game company Kwalee. She introduced that a senior publishing designer is more like a leading job. In her role, she does lots of teaching and is also able to work with people from all over the world. Her leadership skills and experience in the game industry make her advanced in her profession.

I especially appreciate Bea Grove’s suggestions towards extra portfolio work. She suggested us to add extra self lead projects and designs of unmade games. I was surprised when I heard we can add designs of unmade games into portfolios. I have been told that the most important thing in game design is to finish a game, as no matter how good our game ideas are, if the game is not shipped, the impact is zero. After reflecting on Bea Grove’s suggestion,unmade games are actually pre-production work, as a games design student who contributes more on concept art ,I have loads of ideas on original characters and props design but unfortunately I cannot put them all together into games, including pre-produced game ideas increase the opportunity to showcase more of my work. 

I learnt detail and practical interview ideas throughout her speaking. Based on Bea Grove’s experience, she mentioned that when we are invited to an interview, employers normally have read our CVs, they just want to get to know us, so instead of reciting skills mentioned on CVs like “I know how to use photoshop/ unity”, they will like to see my passion towards them and our problem solving skills.

We should research the company before interviews to let them know we are passionate about them, we need to be able to answer their recent games and understand what kind of games they are well-known for to show we are excited to join them. 

To show our practice in problem solving, we need to provide examples of team and project work that went wrong and how I managed to overcome them. For this, I would definitely share my experience on making games involving cultures that are different from mine.

Discord chat history between me and Esi

I am an Asian and my groupmate Esi is African. I’m making a bobbin lace game and she is making a hair braiding game, therefore, we are planning to combine our ideas and for our project together as we share similar gameplay ideas. Before we started the project, I showed my interest in cornrows and showed my recent favourite videos of Asians with African braids, later, Esi made herself clear, and pointed out her strong thought of making African braids (box braids and cronrows) just for black characters and the reason behind it. At the same time, she considered me, thinking I would also like to make Asian characters, so she suggested having other types of braids for other characters based on their origins. I extremely appreciate Esi embracing her cultural tradition while considering others. I think it is a perfect example of good communication- speaking about our concern, having respect for each other and providing solutions.   

Megan Matthews

Megan Matthews is a multidisciplinary games designer at Ustwo games, specialized in level design for mobile/ console puzzle games.She is dedicated to creating accessible games for disabled which revolve around non-violent themes, reflecting her kind nature to make games that comfort people. 

Before stepping into the industry, Megan Matthews joined a summer program ,about a few months, Den (her employer) suggested she have a full time junior games designer position. She also mentioned, throughout her journey, she has been going through rejection and redirection. Instead of just rejecting her, those companies help to inform other companies which have positions open and link her to them. From her career path, I once again realized how important networking is and how valuable it is to maintain connections with working partners. This encouraged me to reach out to classmates I hadn’t talked to much in the past, stay connected with the people I collaborate with. Building relationships is not only about opening up opportunities, but also a chance to hear ideas, feedback from my creative classmates. 

Megan Matthews is working in a playful working environment, she introduced her daily routine as a game designer, and I found activities she and her teammates do as a part of their work are interesting and meaningful. Megan Matthews and her teammates brainstorm their idea with “Crazy 8”. They set a topic of 8 things for each person, someone writes about 8 concerns, someone writes 8 things they hate about the game, and then votes for things such as what they need to exclude from the production. I think it is a playful and effective activity to organise ideas,and help us focus on what we should truly pay attention to within loads of thoughts. Since I am working in pairs, we do not come up with loads of ideas so mind maps are the best solution to sum up our ideas, but when I get to work with a lot of people in the future, I will definitely consider doing this activity with my teammates as they might find interest in coming up ideas with group activities than boring spreadsheets works  

I extremely appreciate Megan Matthews’s template example of a personal page, she clearly introduced and demonstrate keys to build our page better.

Megan Matthew’s person page template example

We need to include a landing page and a project page and in our self documented website. About the landing page, the key is to include our feature project at the most prominent spot on our page, in order to let the hiring manager notice our specialization immediately, at the same time, we also need to consider where we want them to travel to/ where it looks like they can travel next. I think a good layout arrangement guides website visitors to understand our strengths and overall concept. About the project page, we need to show our wide-range of knowledge, including a catchy image and short description of each project we have contributed to. Since year 2, we are encouraged to document our working process in workpress, as a preparation for us to create a personal page in future. I think it really helped me with a basic knowledge of how to run a web page. To be honest, it was more difficult than I thought , but I have learned how to include GIFs, short audio and arrange buttons for directing to other pages. I will try my best to improve and make my personal side as accessible as it could.     

Reference:

3DTech (2020) Virtual Tour Using Sphere with unity. Available at: watch (Accessed: 1 December 2025).