Blog Introduction

Writing about myself seems a really daunting task but here goes. I’m Alex King and I come from a town on the outskirts of London called Dunstable. Throughout education, I had always shown strength in and passion for art related subjects whether it was art and design or graphic design, that was when it really dawned on me that I wouldn’t be a hundred percent happy unless I was working in an industry that involved art. Even though I have fairly strong drawing skills, I have always lacked 3D experience, so by joining this course I was hoping to build my skills more on the 3D side of things this year. This may be difficult for me at first due to having no experience what so ever on the 3D computer software, but after all that is why I am here, to work hard and develop myself as an artist. In the first year I would also like to build strong relationships with my class mates and lecturers so that i feel there approachable, as am I, for support when it comes to improving our weaknesses. Apart from gaming obviously, I enjoy the normal things a guy of my age enjoys, like music, going out, socialising and just generally having a laugh when I can. It’s good to keep a good balance between these and work so that working hard doesn’t seem like a chore.
When asking a game student what they dream to become when there older, I bet you get a lot of 'concept artist' answers, well here’s another one I’m afraid. I know it’s an extremely difficult field to get into but I'll give it my best shot. For me the most appealing thing about being a concept artist is having freedom with your imagination and drawing influence by simple observation, for example visiting a country with different civilizations then coming up with your own ideas loosely based on your experiences for a game or even film. The crucial skills for this area would have to be an exceptional imagination and a good understanding of perspective, emotion and mood to really capture scenes or characters in as much realism as possible. I think the whole aim is to produce a believable concept that would have as much of an impact on the viewer as a photograph or piece of fine art. 
At present I think I have the basics of a concept artist like the attention to detail, imagination developed through experiences in my life and a strong drawing style developed through years of fine art practices like life drawing. Having said that, my skills when it comes to computer aided work are very limited and I know that a large quantity of concept work is digitally editted. I also think that my personal experiences, when it comes to visiting new places and engaging with photography to document findings, could be broadened because it is a very usefull tool to improve my imagination and give me a better understanding of achieving realism within my work. I plan to improve my weaknesses by putting the time and effort into the digital and 3D elements of my work. To do so i will talk to second and third year students for support and advice and just practice regularly by modelling simple objects around my home.