A new beginning

Hi all,

Welcome to my blog. I have set this up because I have recently started a Master’s degree in Indie Game Development at Falmouth University and as part of my study, I am required to keep a journal so that I can track my personal and professional development.

I should probably starting by writing a bit about myself. I grew up in London, but I now live in East Grinstead. The past few years, I have been working as a graphic designer for several companies and I have also done work on a freelance basis. I currently work for an online marketing company called dotdigital, where I have been for exactly 1 year and 6 days.

I also have a BA (Hons) degree in Animation which I studied for at Ravensbourne University and graduated with a 2:1 in 2012.

During both university and my employment (as well as in my spare time), I have acquired a whole range of creative skills to varying proficiencies which include animation, illustration, graphic design, web design, UI/UX design and video editing.

Outside of work and studying, I have a lot of passions and interests. I really enjoy making art, both digitally and traditionally. I like drawing and painting. I have also tried to write my own comics before. As well as that, I am into martial arts and I have been doing Wing Chun for a few years, but I have also started to look into other martial arts, although its difficult to pursue during the pandemic.

I like music and I have been playing guitar on and off for about 16 years and before the pandemic I liked going to see live music. At the moment, I particularly like listening to Synthwave and Vapourwave and I also like the visual artwork that goes with it. I also particularly like following Japanese rock bands. Before the pandemic, I was into travelling and I am keen to more travel once things calm down… if indeed they ever do!

As I am on a game development course, I should perhaps mention some of my favourite games. At present, I play a lot of World of Warcraft and I play as a Night Elf Monk called Trodaire. I enjoy playing Dota 2, Valorant, Starcraft II, League of Legends, Sea of Theives and Civilisation V. Along with those, I really enjoy playing RPGs.

The first unit of my degree is called Development Practice and from what I have gathered by reading the brief and going over it with my Study Support mentor, I will need to research as part of this unit and I will make some small projects that reflect this research and I will then need to evaluate how the practices I used relate to the industry… at least that’s how I understood it.

To be honest, feeling a bit overloaded by all the information, mainly due to being autistic and I am prone to overload. But we have our first seminar tomorrow evening so hopefully that will clear everything up.

The first challenge that we have been assigned, though, is to create an avatar based on objects around our home. I have to have a think about this, but this will be an interesting one.

In the meantime, I have managed to chat with some people on Canvas and its quite amazing to come across people from so many different backgrounds with so many different areas of expertise and different levels of experience, yet we have all decided to pursue this same path. I’m also amazed by how many people on the course are also based in East and West Sussex.

I’m looking forward to getting to know everyone on my course better and developing further over the next two years.