Final evaluation - BA1a

This term has been full of new experiences and I've tried my hardest to push myself out of my comfort zones and experiment as much as possible. I'm still trying to develop an effective workflow for myself which allows me to design more quickly and more easily; I think this will come with time and practise but for now I will continue to try new methods as I discover them.

This unit introduced me to a lot of new ideas - silhouetting, iterating, etc. These methods forced me to think about my designs a lot more deeply, whereas before I would just pick a design without ever really developing it. I feel like this really showed through in some much more original designs than anything I had done previously. I also began to use some more diverse photoshop brushes to make my work more distinctive - along with putting much more thought into planning my pieces this has lead to some work this term that I'm really proud of.

Getting back into life drawing is going to be very helpful going forward I think, it's been a long time since I've been to any sessions and I could see the difference in my work. I'm also trying to use more references instead of just trying to work from memory all the time and sometimes struggling for longer that I need to when I could learn from references.

In future, I want to focus more on realistic rendering, as in the past I've focused mostly on stylised styles and semi-realism, and I want to broaden my skill set. In addition, I feel like some of my designs can be a little clichéd in places, so I want to work on pushing my ideas farther to come up with more rounded and original designs.

Time management-wise I think I could have done better - although I was mainly on top of everything there were a few points where I felt a little overwhelmed, and I feel I could provide myself with a better structure to work off of in the future. Part of this is getting used to the pace of the course, but I know that I also need to be stricter with myself.

Overall I'm very satisfied with the work I've produced in this unit and look forward to bettering it in the next one. Looking at the project brief I feel that I have met most of the expected outcomes, although I want to practise much more in Zbrush to make sure I have at least a sound basic understanding of it. Also, I want to devote much more time to studies and research going forward, to give my work some depth and realism, and to allow me to focus more on developing my designs than on making sure I am rendering them properly.