The end is nigh...

This week pretty much marks the end of my 3rd year at Abertay. I’m not quite sure how I feel about it. It's kind of scary looking forward to 4th year and having to finally leave and go out into the big bad world, but on the other side of it I can look back and see the vast improvement in my skills with all sorts of software.

This year has been a huge learning curve. The change in the quality of my work is monumental and even looking back to the end of last semester I find myself cringing a little at my own work. As an artist this is always the case, skills improve and you learn more as you go along but I certainly feel that this year there is a quantum leap in the standard of my work.

I think this year has certainly marked a change in my maturity toward work and university life in general. I look back now to 1st and 2nd year and realise the opportunities that I’ve squandered and as with most of my peers I wish I could go back in time and tell myself to get my finger out and use the chances that I neglected at the time.

One advantage to this however is that I have realised how little time I have left at university and so I now have a passion and desire to make up for time lost. I’ll be throwing myself fully into extra-curricular projects to improve my portfolio throughout the summer and if I have time, during my honours year.

I have started on plans to join with a small number of other students so that we can produce a short film during our summer break. There are no solid details yet but watch this space for more on the subject.

Well it's goodbye to third year, thanks you've been a blast :P

YouTube Channel

I've now got my YouTube channel up and running with my 2010 animation showreel uploaded.

Have a look at: http://www.youtube.com/user/tomfeistwilson

Hope you like it.

The joys of Rendering

My day today has been mostly about rendering, which is both good and bad. Good because it means that I'm nearly finished my coursework, but also bad when 100 frames of the render are named wrongly and have to be re-rendered. Having said that it's been a fairly successful day, last year's rendering experience was far worse when I had to re-render my animaion about 3 times.

One thing that it has alerted me to is that I don't really know an awful lot about rendering and lighting so I think part of my summer reading list will have to include a few books on the subject.

So now that I'm nearly done I'd better get cracking with the essays, which unlike most, I have actually made a start on. Most of my reading has been done at work which is great cause I'm basically earning money while studying, it's one of the best things about working at a Museum :)

well this is the final sprint for the finish line before i have to start thinking about my summer animation project ;) ...