I did it, I graduated! I have officially a Bachelor in Design now! š
And here it is at last: the final lineup of harpy characters from my graduation project. Unfortunately I didnāt have enough time to iterate on colours too, perhaps I will still do that later on. š
Happy new year everyone! š
In keeping up with the tradition, a list of memorable things happening last year!
What kind of great things happened to you in 2018? š
Almost three months in, I am high due telling you guys more about my graduation project, donāt 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 didnāt want to graduate yet and do an internshipĀ 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 itās done. From February onwards, I will write a series of blogposts about the more theoretical part of my project, the whyās and howās basically. Ā Itās 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 Iām so devastately tired that I just sleep until half March.
On another note, I am slightly ashamed to admit Iām 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!Ā 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. Ā I have said from the beginning that itās gonna be hard to juggle, but itās just too much fun to give up, especially when I’m so far into this already!
But, letās end this blog on a happy note! Thereās the new gameplay trailer of Godhood, the game I worked on during my internship! It was published a few days ago already but Iām terrible with keeping up with those things! Iām 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!
My internship at Abbey Games is over, what a blast it has been! I worked on so many different things: character animations, buildings, trees and shrubs, marketing illustrations, icons and even UI! Still, it’ll take a while before I can show my glorious contribution, the soonest things will be revealed is in the first half of 2019. A little patience, my friends!Ā
I’m sad it’s over, but I guess it’s time to move on. I’ll be enjoying my summer holidays now and in September I’ll start working on my graduation project. Whatever my graduation project will be: I have no ideas yet. I’ll just see what happens.
And hopefully, now I have a lot of free time again, I get back on track with drawing and painting again!
“I’ll keep you informed on the progress.” That was almost two months ago. Oops. 
Of course I should have written something earlier, but all of my energy went into creating the concept art, illustrations and 3D models for this game, as well as applying for internships, my new job and on top of that the usual December festivities … I didn’t have much energy left for dA. But now I have one thing less to worry about: I secured an internship position at a small game studio, whoo!
Then our game!
It’s called Aurora Trail and it’s a puzzle adventure game for pc! It has just recently gottenĀ a Steam pageĀ and we’ll release publicly January 8th! Early acces will be earlier, naturally, so if you want to play it earlier I can probably give you a Steam code around Christmas. ^^; We have aĀ Facebook page,Ā InstagramĀ andĀ Twitter, as well as aĀ website, if you want to follow us (and see pictures of us in real life!)Ā
Yesterday was the day: professionals would be visiting us and looking at our work. The idea behind it was a chance for us to start networking and make contacts for our internship.
As I am planning to go on exchange to Prague instead of doing and internship one would say it wouldn’t be that bad if it wouldn’t go so well. But I was so stressed for it that I actually needed some time for my own after building up.Ā
… But it went actually pretty well!Ā Two game studios talked to me and gave me their cards! The whole atmosphere was really relaxed and informal, we even talked about the new Zelda game, yay!
I am really happy now and that it is behind me as well. I am actually the only one in my class so interested in games and wanting to design for games. In the Animation class there is more interest in the game industry, but at Illustration there is not for some reason. It made me stand out, which is good, I guess! š
Tomorrow Inktober is starting again and I’m super excited! This year I’ve decided to use the daily drawings to play around with story ideas for the harpy characters I came up this summer. Yes, the one winged harpy isn’t alone anymore: I have ideas for at least five other characters and a vague plot line! š
I’m not giving away any more, but I shall provide enough context with every Inktober drawing so you can slowly getting to know these new characters and their quirks. For now can tell you that Ms. one-wing has gotten a name, Jurmala, and she loves to put on pranks!
In other news, the game project is slowly getting on it’s end. Next Wednesday we’ll having a presentation where the game has to be basically finished. If any game-breaking bugs appear we have till Monday 9th to fix them and finish all the paperwork! After that, we move on to our next project (a 3D game)!
Sorry for the neglect of art and content the last few months. Trying to keep it up again! Have here a long overdue finally finished English version of that Czech comic I was working on.
Here it is, at last! My paper stop-motion animation about a knife thrower and his lovely assistant.
