Game Art Conference 2014
So today we had the first game art conference for this year! I wasn't sure what to expect as we'd only been told about it a few weeks ago - even then we were only told we'd be having a day in the library to help us out with blogging. The element of surprise was quite nice though as it left everyone guessing about what was going to be happening on the day...So today consisted of a variety of lectures that were specifically designed to help us on specific areas of writing skills. There was a number of sessions we could choose to attend; some may have been recommended to us by the CS team. I attended the following:-
- Word art: using words creatively
- How to write when you don't want to write
- Your blog as a conversation with experts
and finally
- Confidence building for success
The first session was really fun as it was rather interactive and involved working in a team with people I wouldn't normally work with. We were given the word 'animate' and had to think of words starting with each letter that related to game art. For example, for the letter 'n' we had nGon. Nasty things. *secret link*
We then moved on to analyse an image the lecturer had given us. In this exercise we basically had to write a paragraph on what emotions the piece portrayed, how it made us feel/react etc. All of the artwork analysis' I did at college are coming into practice once again! This was then turned into a very basic blog post and was helping us understand what methods we could use if we're ever stuck on what order to write things.
Following on from this first session, I stayed for the next session which was 'how to write when you don't want to'. I had so much fun in the first lesson so this turned out to be not as exciting :( I still found it really enjoyable and helpful though as I was given a hell of a lot of useful information that I'm sure will help me in the future. This involved being asked questions on why we thought we couldn't work. Lack of motivation? Fear of failure? Too many ideas? Tiredness? These were all but a few questions on our 'Why I can't write...' checklist. We then did a 5 minute free writing task about why we chose to study game art at DMU. This was reeeeeaaally cool as it was literally banging out words without having to worry about punctuation (welp).
After a short break we were put straight back into action - the next session being 'your blog as a conversation with experts'. To cut a long story short, this session covered referencing and was super useful as after blog assessments I had a few pointers saying that I needed to reference as I was going along, using citations, rather than compiling a huge list of links at the end. We did a few tasks that involved plates and cutlery, so immediately we all thought we'd be eating food. How wrong we were...
The task we were given was to analyse a piece of writing using the skimming, scanning, scouring, surfing, and another one which I can't for the life of my remember what it was...oops. We then had to write questions and criticisms on said plates about why the writer has chosen the points he has, and what he could possibly do to make it a teeny tiny bit better.
Finally, the last session I chose to attend was 'confidence building for success'. This session involved a small group of people sharing ideas on what helps them with academic confidence, what areas they could improve on and how they're planning on doing so. This session was absolutely awesome and was definitely my favourite of the day! There was only six of us in the room, so it was really interactive and involved us analysing certain processes we were confident in doing, and if we weren't, what we could change about it. There was also a short task in which the whole group had to stand up and throw a ball at each other. The person with the ball had to answer two questions 'what have I learnt about myself since starting at DMU?' and 'how could I show others that I'm more confident?' after they'd answered, the ball was then thrown to someone else until everyone was sat down again!
This particular session was so much fun and the tutor really helped too, he was really enthusiastic about what he was teaching us which really helped us all to engage.
A second finally...
Us first years were then taken back into the lecture hall and had an evaluation of the day and conference close. This was more Chris and Mitch showing the awesome art work they'd done in their sessions. I'm sooooooo sad that I didn't attend these *cry face* because they were looking at 'The Last of Us' and the group were given words related to the game to create a basic storyline for the film adaptation. Kind of playing the role of an art director... A story was then chosen and Mitch did a quick concept of the story written by a student - and I must say, it was bloody awesome, which makes me even more sad about not being able to attend!
Gah.
Anyway, overall I had a brilliant day and I've definitely taken a lot in and am able to know just how to improve my writing. There's probably a load of words that don't make sense here, add an 'm' in somewhere. This keyboard doesn't work properly. *sigh*
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