Catching up, part 2

Alright, since my first post I asked a few friends about what they thought about my attempts at blogging. What was the most common response from this group of scholars? "tl;dr"... which for those of you who don't speak geek means "to long; didn't read". I would like to ensure any who may be reading this that it is not my intention to bombard people with walls of text every post. I had originally envisioned fairly short updates on what I am working on in my classes as I progress through school. Really, I would like for those who read this to realize that if I can do it, anyone can. Some of the art I will post I will be proud of (I hope anyway), but intend to post just as much that, well... didn't quite turn out as I had expected. I want to give people a real idea of what the path to working in the games industry is like, because I had no idea. To be perfectly honest, I'm not even sure where this path will take me, but I'll let you know as I figure it out.

So, in the last post I left off at the beginning of 2009, my first quarter at The Art Institute. I had thought that in a program where you learn to make video games that I would be about as well prepared as one could get. Why? Simple, because I've played a ton of video games. You can imagine how surprised I was when rather the supply kit they give all the new students didn't come with any games. Instead, it was full of pencils, pens, acrylic paints, drawing pads, even a light box (which at the time I had no idea how to use). The "Art" in Art Institute should have tipped me off. The majority of the first year of the program is spent developing basic artistic skills in classes like observational drawing, beginning design, and color theory. This was the point where I was beginning to think that I had made a huge mistake.

I've always liked to think of myself as a creative person, but was never one to call myself an "artist". I figured that title was reserved for people who were just naturally awesome at their artistic medium. Luckily for me, I've had some great instructors who showed me that Artistic ability, like anything else, can only be perfected through tons of practice. This may sound like a basic concept, but there was a time not so long ago I was sure that you were either born good at Art or not, and that misconception almost scared me into giving up altogether. In a future post I plan to show some of the progression of my drawings to drive home this point of "yes, he can be taught".

That brings us up to the present. I'm now in my sixth quarter at school, and enjoying it more and more all the time. I don't want to give anyone the impression that this is easy, it's actually a lot of work. It's just a lot of work that I enjoying, so I sometimes find it hard to even classify as "work". I know that these first couple of posts have been kind of a general overview of things, but now that I've filled in the back story I can get into more specific stuff. What does this mean for you? Well, hopefully it means a little less of me droning on and a little more fun stuff. Fun, that is what the internets were made for right?