Summer Update, Part I.

We're now over half way into 2015 and the summer holidays are well under way. Last week we all received our results for the year. I got what I expected and I'm fairly pleased. It was a tough year, but I feel I've improved a little since first year and my grades reflected that.

That said, I do not feel ready for third year. I still have so much to learn. So I’ve continued working into the summer on several personal projects. One of these is to create a realistic, next-gen, AMT Hardballer hand gun, with the intention of improving my subdivision modelling and learning Substance Painter.

I’ve not done a lot of high poly stuff in 3DS Max and right now, I’m pretty slow. But I’m happy to spend the time on it, so long as I keep enjoying myself, keep learning new things and keep getting faster. When I finished the high poly, I posted it online and got some great feedback. I made my corrections and now I'm on to the low poly.

Aside from that, I've been really cutting back on social media. I've stopped posting my 2D work all together. Don't worry, this isn't going to turn into a rant, but it has made a huge difference!

Recently, my attitude towards painting and drawing transitioned from 'work' to 'hobby'. 3D is now very clearly what I want to do for a living and 2D is a challenging, mostly enjoyable pastime. Disentangling Facebook from my hobby has been exceedingly liberating.

I've also found time to read again and have been tearing through my enormous back log of books. I'm pretty bad at making time to read during term time, which is a shame because it's something I really enjoy. But now it's the holidays and I don't feel guilty about taking a couple of hours a day to read, whether it's novels or non-fiction. I've found it really refreshing and even did a few studies from one of the painting books I finished.

Exercises from Digital Painting Techniques, Vol I.

However I'm a bit bored of doing studies, especially from photographs. I was finding them quite frustrating at one point until Anya pointed out that I was picking extremely difficult images. She picked a few easier ones out for me and things went a little more smoothly. Still, I should do more original paintings.

Snowy Mountain, photo study.

Rocky Hill, photo study.

And finally, I've been prototyping a racing game. One of my stronger final major project ideas for next year. I've managed to get a short track up and running with checkpoints, a lap timer and a 'best time' high score thing. It was actually not a lot of work, so providing I can keep the level a manageable size, it's shaping up to be a pretty good option. The thing I need to look at next is how vehicles work in Unreal Engine, but how hard can it be?

Hope everyone's having a lovely summer!