8. Reflect on practice and recognise and critically appraise strengths and weaknesses.

I have learned a lot from the Concept Art Practice module. There were briefs that demanded the development of ideas far from my comfort zone as an artist. Due to that I produced a lot of work that I would not have normally, which would aid in the creation of a more diverse portfolio. Having external review of my work by all guest lecturers from industry provided invaluable insight of what would be required of me as a professional concept artist. 

In regards to the latter, the extensive brief given to us by Atomhawk is perfectly relevant. It was very specific including mood-boards, references and a style-guide.  It was interesting to work on such a tightly-defined brief, when previously all projects I had worked on were considerably open to an artist's interpretation. The feedback I got from that presentation was very useful including practical advice on how to improve my work as a whole.  I was advised to use cleaner lines when defining the edges of shapes. My car design seemed to be on the right track, but it was quite underdeveloped. I was encouraged to continue with iterations of the design, as well as to make a series of improvements on the images I had produced, which are applied in my submission. The environments for the same brief were less convincing with too much reliance of photography. 

The Dreamworks project is perhaps my weakest response to a brief in this module, and definitely my weakest presentation. Compared to the rest of the work presented, it seemed unoriginal and it did not provoke much discussion. Aside from that, the presentation itself was not as graphically pleasing as it should have been. I had crammed my work on very few slides, which  did not follow my design process. This resulted in me not talking enough about the decisions I had made in the concept stage which further decreased the quality of my presentation.

I would say a lot of my weaknesses  are due to poor time-management on my part. I struggled with the wide variety of  briefs, and therefore I spent too long on the research or development stage. As a result, I have extensive development images and reference mood-boards,while my final work produced is nowhere near the quality and number I had been planning.

This was most evident in my response to Peter Amachree's brief to combine ancient Rome with newly discovered technologies. Due to the realistic direction I took with the brief, I overly researched early electricity and specific time periods of ancient Roman history. Despite Peter being pleased with the designs not looking excessively technological, my images were too unfinished  to communicate visually the ideas  I had described verbally. Similarly, the feedback I received by Lee Brown from Ubisoft reflected that although my research was in-depth, I lacked the images that visualize my research and sell the atmosphere of what I am proposing for his Assassins Creed brief.