Monday 21 April 2014

Game Art Conference Day

A few weeks back I attended a Game Art conference day, mainly focussing on our blog writing and the feedback we received on our blogs a week prior. We were recommended various classes to attend depending on how we were doing on our blogs, the day consisted of 4 sets of classes each quarter of the day had 3 classes and we could choose which to attend. I decided to go to Word art: using words creatively, shaping your writing, The tools of visual practice and using them in your critical writing and Practical strategies for getting on with it. These were all the ones that were suggested to me along with one I wanted to go to as it sounded interesting to me. I definitely feel like my blog writing could be improved a hell of a lot so I was quite looking forward to the day.

The first class I went to was word art, we worked in groups looking at alternative words we could use in our blog to help make it more interesting and help it to flow a little better. We analysed an image from a particular artist, using lots of descriptive words and our general feelings on the piece; we then went on to try and come up with a title as if we were writing about it for a blog post. Overall I found it to be quite useful, I know try to think a little about the words I am using and the general flow of my sentences however I would of perhaps gotten more out of this class if it was a little more focussed towards game art.

The second class I attended was about shaping your writing, the main focus of this class was to help focus your writing and to make sure we don’t ramble on about nothing as it can get a little dull for the reader.  We were tasked with creating a comic strip, it could be about absolutely anything we wanted but we were limited to only 5 panels so we had to be to the point. This was one of the more useful classes of the day as I feel I can ramble on a little in my writing, in the posts I have written since the conference day I have tried to focus my writing and feel I have done so much more successfully than before.


The third class I attended was about the tools of visual practice, I actually really enjoyed this class. It was lead by our usual visual design tutors so was very relevant to the course. The class consisted of developing creative writing skills to analyse images from games, concept art and movie stills, which eventually lead on to us describing a scene of our own for Mitch (one of the tutors) to take away and paint. Initially I was out of my comfort zone, I had never really done this before but I slowly got in to it and eventually got the hang of it; id probably say that the time we had felt quite rushed, i would of preferred a little more time to begin with. I also plan to create a piece of writing describing a scene and then try painting it in my free time.

The fourth class of the day was about practical strategies for getting on with it, I had actually seen this presentation before during employability week a good while ago. It was mainly focussing on time management and planning ahead, which I do struggle a little from time to time so it was a welcome reminder and I felt a little more inspired to go away and plan my time more effectively.


All in all the day was rather useful, I felt like I learnt a fair bit especially in the creative writing session and I look forward to painting from a piece of my own creative writing. As well as implement everything I learnt in to my blog I will plan my time each week to make sure I use my time efficiently.

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