This time will be spent waiting for my book to be printed and delivered. Above you can see that I've made some last minute improvements to the "lineup" image that I produced earlier in the project - in addition to the two-tone markings at the top and bottom of the background, the images are now complimented with glowing particles, which I think work well in conjunction with the light sources. I did this to move the pieces further away from the "plain dark background" they originally possessed, which I have been told is a definite no-go for displaying pieces like this.
Mini Post-Mortem
As I think I've stated many times over the course of the last three years, I am all about quality over quantity. I find it very hard to leave pieces of art alone and move on until they look crisp and polished, and in some cases this has been one of the biggest problems with my work over the time I have spent on this course: the volume. Though I am very happy with the final pieces I have produced for this final project, I can't shake the feeling that I'd probably be a lot more confident if there was more of it. If I had done, say, 5 or 6 production paintings rather than 3, I'd be far less worried about the final grade outcome, but unfortunately that hasn't ended up being the case. I remember early on in the first weeks of the project I was told that I needed to speed up and produce a higher quantity of work, and while I did align with this opinion, it seemed to go against a lot of the work I had produced for prior game art projects, where my work generally had less pre-production and focused mainly on the end result, so that I could produce an accurate representation of my skills.
Now this project has been entirely 2D, so I understand that there are some differences in the overall workflow - 2D artists will be presenting a great number of images, including concept work, whereas my 3D peers will simply be displaying their finished products, as most of their time has gone into building assets, but I don't think I was ready for such a drastic change in the expectations towards me regarding the size of work produced. Though I sped up my production when advised, my tutor kept asking to see more when I simply didn't have anything else - while other students seem to reel out 50 rough silhouette sketches in what seems like no time at all, I had to focus 45 minutes on each little design. This put the pressure on quite a bit. I also found it quite hard to interpret a lot of the feedback given to me, as a lot of what was asked of me just seemed to be squeezing me into a mold of an artist with a different work process - the "right" answer always seemed very specific, with very few alternative paths.
If I could go back, I may have even considered dropping the focus on 2D instead spending half the project modelling these characters, but I was way too far down the line by the time I realised that the traditional artists were getting the worse deal, and I had to make do. I wish I could have started the final pieces earlier in the project, in order to get properly stuck into it - the work plan I had made changed significantly at least twice throughout production, at one point having a minimum of 5 final pieces, each in the style of a different game. I would have started these pieces in time to show a couple off for my presentation, but then the task of adding more characters came into play. In the end, my realistic piece took 3 weeks to paint, the next took 2, and the final one took just over a week, so at least it would seem I'm speeding up in that respect. Too little too late?
On a brighter note, though, this was actually my first time doing proper, polished production paintings of any sort, so I'm proud to have produced 3 pieces that (I hope you will agree) are of a satisfactory industry standard. Long story short, I wish I had more of this work to show off, because the stuff I actually did create was certainly good enough for me, and hopefully enough for the tutors, examiners and employers too. Hopefully next time I'll be able to shake this obsession of quality over quantity.