Intro

Gamemaker + Artist

This is my final year of college, and our professors have guided us in finding our future career paths. As game makers, we must not only understand the game development process but also combine game development with our individual strengths. I decided early on in my first year that I wanted to pursue a career in art, so my career path is undoubtedly “Game Maker + Artist.” More specifically, I hope to become a character concept artist.

What do you desire ?

In my final year, I will spare no effort to hone my skills as a character artist, and I also hope to improve in areas where I’m currently lacking, such as environment, prop, and UI design (it might sound a bit ambitious, but I hope I can pull it off). I learned last semester that we’ll need to create a full-fledged game this year and that I might have to complete the entire project on my own (though I’d much rather find like-minded teammates), so I’m mentally prepared for a very busy year filled with challenges.
Most importantly, I’m doing all of this in the hope of finding a job in my field before I lose my status as a recent graduate.

The Brief

2 Phases of This Semester

1.Research Phase：week1,2 + week3,4，general research + pick a theme and continue research

2.Create Phase：week5-8，present 3 ideas for games / products – Monday Week 9

week9-12，play / prototype→ translate into a “GPP”，hand in

It sounds like we’re on a tight schedule… I’m really skeptical that we can spend so much time in the early stages and then rely on what we’ve built up to quickly write the “GPP” later on, but what lies ahead is a complete unknown to me.

Workshop

What
makes you cry / makes you Laugh / gets you excited / get angry / stimulates you intellectually / interests you

This was a two-person assignment, but due to my limited English skills and narrow perspective, we weren’t able to come up with many truly impressive phrases.

I realize this activity is meant to help us narrow down potential directions for our project this semester, but I still don’t have any ideas. Maybe it’s because of a different way of thinking—when I’m designing a game, I usually settle on a theme quickly and then spend more time on the gameplay mechanics, because if I want to make a game, it’s usually because I’ve come up with a theme and feel that a game is the best medium to express it.

I have to admit that I didn’t participate very well during the second half of the class because neither my partner nor I understood what we were supposed to do. I looked at the student next to me and guessed that we were supposed to choose one of the words we’d just written down and brainstorm ideas from it. At first, I tried to brainstorm ideas for “onion” from a perspective I found fun and novel, but I realized I couldn’t take it any further, so I chose “Goodbye” instead.

I like the feeling that “goodbye” evokes, because even when the same person says it, its meaning and the events leading up to it can vary greatly, creating countless possibilities. So I think that if I ever make a game in the future, I’ll incorporate this element to let players experience all kinds of goodbyes within the game. Another reason is that saying goodbye is something I’m currently going through myself. After this year, I’ll be leaving the UK, and with many of the people I’m saying goodbye to, I may not know when we’ll see each other again. I want to preserve these memories through this semester.