Graeme Daly Computer Animation Arts Rochester: 2016

I learned a lot about myself from this project. A recurring problem that needs to be nipped in the bud is my time management skills and also learning to get something finished and not perfect. From my last project I said to myself that I was going to work my hardest from the get go and I can honestly say that I have never worked so hard on a project from start to finish before. Even though I worked hard I still wasn't able to feel completely content in the way that my design looked and I feel like I bit of more than I could chew in terms of designing my city. I really need to understand that I have a brief and a deadline to follow and learn and let go of the small nitty gritty details that are eating away at me and my time as I feel like I'm a complete perfectionist and if it doesn't look right to me I won't be happy.

I need to adhere to the fact that technology is never always completely reliable and problems that take time to recover from do happen and they always seem to happen when you really don't have the time. I ran into a lot of issues with programs and my computer and I need to allow time in projects to rectify these issues as not allowing myself any sleep for three days is not healthy!. I also need to allow myself time to finesse my designs and I feel like having my designs done two weeks before the deadline will give me time to finish them properly but again this goes along with understanding that everything just cant be perfect. I am really disappointed in myself for not making my crit in time as I really wanted more than anything to hear the constructive criticism from my lecturers and to learn and grow from this but It is a lesson learned and I'll never miss a cribt again as I cant stop punishing myself for it.

I am proud of myself for this project as I worked very hard on it and I thoroughly enjoyed it and I do feel like it does show in my designs albeit if there not quite up to my standards. I feel like I have grown a lot in terms of my digital painting designs and my Maya skills as I never in my dreams imagined that I would be able to produce something like this in such a short amount of time. I love that its not just in my technical skills where I feel growth but also in my artistic vision as the advice from OGR's were essential in understanding what looks good and what doesn't and I feel like I'm starting to understand this from trial and error as some of the advice I contemplated myself but I wasn't sure of doing, but now I'm just going to give it a whirl and upload it to the blog anyway.

Probably the best thing I did was go to the pub on the Friday after the crit and have a chat with the third years and the alumni and ask them for advice on how they tackle projects and this project in particular, there advice was extremely beneficial and It's definitely something that I am going to adopt for future projects. I am going to be doing "To do" lists every day to keep me on track with my project and follow it religiously, I am also going to try and finish my projects two weeks before the deadline to allow myself time to polish it and have all the supporting documents done, on time for hand in. I also really need to be doing my Art of from day one and chip away at it slowly as I don't particularly like the way the Art of for this project looks and I know that I have the skills to make it look like a professional book which is what is asked of me instead of it just looking like a bunch of pictures plopped on top of a background. I am also going to be asking the third years for advice more often any time that I can as they have been through this before and what could take me hours to figure out an issue in Maya could take them minutes.

In a nutshell im proud of myself for this project but disappointed that I missed my crit and mainly I need to work on my time management and learn to not be such a perfectionist.