End of year 2

Its the end of the year, it is! Its been a very short year this year. I mean, not in actual atomic time, but in my perception of time. Time cant actually shift in pace unless you do something with gravity or something along those lines. Ewan really wants to explain that, but I'm not going to give him the satisfaction. So lets review things, whilst trying to answer some of these questions about university and what not. What do I intend to get from my university experience, you ask? I'm not sure, but its not a lie that our degree itself (as in the physical little piece of paper thingy) isn't worth much. Not if you're headed to the game industry anyway. We've always been competing with lots of very skilled and dedicated people who haven't gone near a university, because primarily that's what the industry is looking for- skill and dedication. There's already been a blog post about that, so lets not get into it here. But the point is that its my own skill and development that has to evolve in order for me to get the most i can out the course. Its really refreshing actually, when it does just become about personal development rather than some final goal. Improvement never ends, and there isn't really an end goal. In terms of reflection on the year, I do feel like I've made a pretty big improvement in terms of both my 2D and 3D ability. I've also got a pretty clear picture of my direction over the near future, in that I'm pretty set on setting up a studio over this coming summer, and there is a single large project lined up for the coming year. This is a venture that a close friend of mine is embarking upon with me, and we'll see how that turns out. Its a good time to be an indie developer, and whilst its going to be ridiculously hard, its certainly something I have to go with. I've got a few goals for the summer than involve learning coding and more technical elements of game production- which is going to be fun, for sure. I'm really looking forward to starting third year as I really feel that a lot of my progression has been through the means of the university. I have definitely improved in my personal work too, but the network of like-minded people at university can't be beaten. Ive learned so much from my peers in particular, and it cant be understated how inspiring they are. Actually, whilst we're on the subject- a lot of the first years seem to have made really good progress.

I'm sure that third year will probably fly by faster than this year has, and this will all be over very soon. But the great thing about this course will be that in many ways, our degree itself isn't the target. Where other people will hit that target and think- "What next?" We'll be going on as always, just trying to better our abilities and ultimately ourselves as people. It never ends. Is this next quote relevant? Not really, it's quite cool though. People do that, don't they? End big things with quotes and all.

"Cowards die many times before their deaths

The valiant never taste of death but once."

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Julius Caesar