2010 comes to a close and I have completed my last year’s goal of doing a sketch a day. It was good practice at discipline, but I felt that some days it was more of an academic exercise and I wasn’t really improving because I weren’t pushing through the bad habits.
Moving forward, I will introduce what I call the “Spider Project”. A spider has eight legs so they must be far more productive than my mere two. A spider can create a huge web when they can only see a small portion at a time and the web they create is interconnected with other parts of the web.
When thinking about all my interests I alternate between drawing, 3D, programming, web design/development, illustration, game development and a few more. Some of these are related, such as drawing helps 3D, illustration helps web design.
I took the last year to mainly focus on drawing, but now I want to expand more into the 3D and other areas. I also want to focus my development energies into finished products rather than idealistic concepts. I understand my motivation will change as the weeks go by and it’s important to embrace this.
My overall goal is to produce a portfolio showreel of my work. I will chart my competencies in each area of a subject of interest so that I can measure progress.
The format will take on the experiences of the Sketch a Day project. Taking the time to learn is very important, but also taking the time to explore, discover, create and even fail are very important. The format for the “Spider Project” is as follows:
- A subject will be chosen
- 2 weeks will be spent researching, learning and planning the subject
- 2 weeks will be spent exploring and applying the nearly learnt information
- A portfolio worthy result is aimed for at the end of the 4 week cycle
- Notes must be taken during the learning phase and can be presented in the form of blog posts and video screencasts. This is important so I can refer back to what I learnt when trying to apply the knowledge.
Finally, here is my initial spider diagram where I will measure my progress.
