About my graduation project

Almost three months in, I am high due telling you guys more about my graduation project, don’t you think? I like sharing my progress, especially my thoughts behind the creative decisions I make. The problem is that writing blogs like these take time, time I rather use to actually work on the project. :/

Luckily, I found a way to deal with this!

Normally fourth year students start on their graduation project in February and finish around the end of June. Then there is a degree show in the first week of July and the school closes for the summer. I decided last year I didn’t want to graduate yet and do an internship instead (best decision ever), and start graduating in September. There are many cons to this: you still have to pay tuition for a full academic year, teachers have less time for you and you have a few weeks less time in general. There is no degree show in February, but you have the opportunity to join in July. Fortunately, there are pros too, and one of them is that you actually have time promoting and preparing your degree show! Instead of stressing until the end of June about making the deadline and putting all ends together, I will have time to plan this thing months ahead!

That is, if I graduate at all! XD

So this is the plan: I am gonna share visual progress, sketches and finished drawings, and photos of the finished project when it’s done. From February onwards, I will write a series of blogposts about the more theoretical part of my project, the why’s and how’s basically.  It’s a bit like the postmortem articles about game design found on Gamasutra: reflecting on the progress of creating something while the project is already round up.

Or perhaps I’m so devastately tired that I just sleep until half March.

On another note, I am slightly ashamed to admit I’m hardly making any progress on the CenturyARkStorm-OCT audition comic. During Autumn Break I made around as much progress as the rest of October and November combined! The deadline being postponed January 12th is nice, though I think it would be best if I tried not to make it. Sounds weird, but as a spectator I can still join in during Round 1, and the final deadline for my graduation project will be around January 21th. So I better not try to get my graduation project in the best shape possible and try to finish these bloody ten pages I have unfinished on my desktop for three months already.  I have said from the beginning that it’s gonna be hard to juggle, but it’s just too much fun to give up, especially when I’m so far into this already!

But, let’s end this blog on a happy note! There’s the new gameplay trailer of Godhood, the game I worked on during my internship! It was published a few days ago already but I’m terrible with keeping up with those things! I’m glad to see my trees are still in the game, as well as the shrine I worked on at 0:16-0:25! I made the leopard statue at 0:48 in the battle too!

Some life updates

Long time since I wrote an actual blogpost here! I thought it would be nice to tell about the things I’m working on and so.

At school I’m working on my graduation project, which consists of a research paper and a ‘practical’ art project. For my research paper I’m researching the harpy and what this mythological creature can mean to us nowadays, perhaps as a symbol. Yes, more harpies! I wasn’t sure if this subject would be a good fit at first, but seeing how this creature has nestled in my mind for the last year, I know it won’t be something I get bored of quickly.

About the practical part, I haven’t got a clue what kind of product this will lead to. I’d love to make a bunch of harpy characters and tell a story, either through a comic or illustrations, but it has of course to build upon the research paper. And you can’t really say anything about a harpy without saying something about the fact that all harpies are female, right? Do I want to make a feminist statement? I’m not sure..

What else? Like I said earlier, I’m preparing to participate in CenturyARkStorm-OCT at DeviantART! I almost got my character application finished, that means, the art is finished, but writing about my character’s personality and backstory is such a hard thing to do XD Especially when it’s set in a world I know very little of; I’m absolutely not familiar with the ZOIDS universe even though I tried to read up as much as I can, so I hope my ideas make sense! ^^

The deadline for auditions is November 1st by the way, and we could use any extra competitor to make this happen!

Back from France!

And France did indeed inspire me! Though the things I’ve drawn there have to wait, as I don’t have access to a scanner yet. But don’t worry, there’s digital art to come too!

After some thinking I decided to give CenturyARkStorm-OCT a shot, but as a spectator rather than a competitor. I don’t think it would be wise to combine something as time-consuming as a original character tournament with graduating from art school! XD Nevertheless I’m very exited where the story will take us! I didn’t know anything about Zoids before Ra-ooo started this OCT, but as soon I found out it included robot dinosaurs I was sold! 

Then there is Comic Con Amsterdam, where I’ll have a stand with two friends. I plan to draw a few new things for that, but not too much. I still have plenty of prints left from my previous con left anyway!