Game Art Conference Day

On the 3rd of April we had a Game Art conference in the Kimberlin Library where there were several workshops and talks available to attend to help us with writing our blogs. I had a lot of fun that day and my overall impression was it was very well conducted.

The four sessions that I attended were 'Learning from Your Peers', 'How to Write When You Don't Want to Write', 'Being Critical in Your Blogs' and 'Practical Strategies for Getting on With it.'

At 'Learning from Your Peers' we discussed how to write blogs and what was hard about doing them with second and third years on our course. They were really useful to talk to as I was going though the same things that they did when they were a first year, so it was good to know that it was going to be ok, and also know what to expect in the later years of the course. As a result of this session I know follow most of the older student's blogs so I can get an idea of how to write them better.

In the 'How to Write When You Don't Want to Write' talk I found it wasn't particularly helpful to me in how to write the blogs when I don't want to, but it helped me realise that I get very easily distracted when writing them. I have as a result taken away some of those distractions, for example, I usually listen to music when I draw or use 3DS Max, but when writing a blog I found it is a bit too distracting and my mind wanders form the subject.

In the 'Being Critical in Your Blogs' session, we were given a piece of text to analyse to find the description, analysis and evaluation. I felt that being critical in my blogs was a weakness of mine, however when I got everything correct in the exercise it made me realise that I know what to analyse, I just need to actually focus and analyse it, instead of just describing it.

With the 'Practical Strategies for Getting on With it.' I realised just how much time I do / don't have for certain things. Part for the reason I think I struggle to get motivated with some of my work and my blogs is that I Have a night job and end up with a terrible sleeping pattern, and therefore hardly ever have a routine in when I do work. Unfortunately I need my job so I can afford to live at university, but as of next year I am aiming to get a job that has more sociable hours so I can get a good sleeping patterns and a routine for my work.

And so I don't end up doing this every morning after work.

 

Overall, the conference day has helped me realise where I am in blog writing and not only what I need to do in order to improve but also how. This conference day has given me very valuable feedback and information and I look forward to something else like thins possibly happening in the future.