Art and Games: personal statement
I have always enjoyed Art from an early age. My earliest memory of this is doodling on sheets of paper and making optical illusion puzzles. I can remember spending most of my childhood just drawing and being inspired to make and design anything and everything! This love of Art and Games has stayed with me and developed and grown and, now, I cannot imagine wanting to do anything else.
I have always wanted to work
within the Art and Game Design industry because it has always felt like the
right direction for me to take. For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to
go to an established Game studio and I now feel really lucky to have the
opportunity to do so: I am feeling very excited about my future!
I enjoy being creative and I view Art and Game
Development as a natural way for me to express myself. I particularly
enjoy drawing and how this allows me to create images in a way that I see them.
I enjoy working in a gestural and free flowing way and I aim to make my work
expressive and visually interesting through line expression and “visual
gravity” . I feel, from my progression from The Staffordshire School of Fine
Arts to York University and trios College, I have developed my own style and
way of working. In art, I particularly enjoy portraiture work and using sports
as subject matter, and in gaming I am always innovating and generating new
ideas for gaming projects.
Whilst at trIOS College (2010-2011), I completed seven gaming projects, gaining a grade A level average. I have since gone on develop gaming projects through the use of GDD’s, TDD’s and ADD’s. I have completed a GDD for a new form of game genre called the Live Investigation genre, a definite improvement over the hidden object, puzzle games which predominate this market niche and are too boring to play.
Whilst at York University, I completed two majors; Art and Screen Writing for TV and Film. I found this writing course very challenging but rewarding as I had grown in my understanding of the discipline and I gained a grade A standing. This four-year course was very beneficial to me as I felt I had developed my skills within Writing and the Visual Arts, and had gained a more intrinsic understanding of the various disciplines required for Video game Design.
These courses have led me to my decision to specialise within the fields of Video Game Design. I enjoy creating images in response to a piece of writing or a particular theme. I like the creative freedom this allows and the vast potential for work.
My interests include playing Video Games, watching movies, and reading and writing graphic novels. Some of my favourite video games include Heroes of Might and Magic, Unreal Tournament, Diablo 2 and Duke Nukem. My favourite movies have to be Aliens 2, Avatar, Chronicles of Riddick, to mention a few, because they are so well written, based on pure plot sequence and have a great impact on the audience. I have recently carried out a comic book illustration based on the ``Tank Girl`` genre, and I am currently working on a series of mobile phone games based on the big 5 sports genres of North America. This is a very exciting project for me to work on right now, because the sports illustrations and sport based games will both enhance each other on my, soon to be released e-commerce web site.
I enjoy visiting Art Galleries and exhibitions. I am particularly interested in figurative portraiture and Illustration-based exhibitions. I have recently visited an exhibition about drawing styles of the Great Masters at the A.G.O. I found this very interesting as there were varied styles and approaches to drawing. A few months ago I attended “COMICON”, this show had a great impact on me ( I especially liked the comic illustrators use of storyboards). and was one of the factors that has led to me pursuing a career in video games. I love the way games combine the use a known genre with the interaction of the player. At this stage, I am interested in contributing visual art assets to video games. I see tutorial based games as a way of bridging the gap between game play and the school curriculum. This is something worthwhile and importance for me . because I know I can capture a child’s imagination and inspire and motivate them to learn to understand the world they live in.