Side tracked in Leicester

First of all my apologies for falling behind on my blog. I've been very busy and ill for the last few days

( Cold, Flu, Headache and insomnia all at the same time) but have recovered quiet well. Either way

Last week during visual design study we had a walk through the city center of Leicester. We had to find a building and draw this in 2 point perspective

<Image will be uploaded shortly>

2point perspective
However after a while we ended up in the shopping center. And as we walked through the shopping center we found this very old and broken down building. And these are one of my big interests.
Beside cathedrals and ruins i really love to see broken down buildings. as you can see the "skeleton" of the building, because it tells a story and makes me curious what would have happened.
here are some of the pictures:

As you can see there must have been a fire or maybe even a small explosion considering the side is completely gone.


Next to this building was a small interesting looking church with a lot of detail so ofcourse i couldn't resist making pictures of this.

My future ???

My future ???

So now you know who I am but what do i want ?
As mentioned in the last post i have always been strongly interested in the 3D environment.
Where i originally wanted to do visual effects i decided to do game-design to the point where i am now.  The reasons behind all these steps were simple. I've always wanted to be able too make what i thought up, to be able and see something and re create it. One of the other things i really enjoy is the struggle with limits. Probably the best example would be: Poly limits ( Hence the name of my blog). This forces artists to find creative ways around objects to make them look more detailed and/or better.

Having said this people might wonder why i did Game-design first then and then game-art. One of the reasons for this is i was that I was not aware between the difference of game-design and game-art. The course involved a lot of game-art and programming aswell as it is  hard to show people a game without having any graphics but the main drive was game-design. Finding new ways of interaction (Gameplay)  and with the main question probably being WHY do this or WHY do that ? This was very useful information but after doing this for several years but i didn't enjoy game-design as much as game-art. With the questions of why still standing, as in: Why do these houses look like that or why do these people wear these type of clothes. The moment the third year students had shown us their work and explained to us the trips that we would make, the research we would do and how we would have to go through a bootcamp to make it. I got exited because i like being challanged, if everything would be too easy then i'd get lazy and most likelly will learn less than when i have to stay sharp to keep up to date.

So what do i expect from the future ???

Overwork, overwork and more overwork. Having worked for Activision as QA/Localisation i know how much extra time the developers had to spend to reach shipping date. Beside overworking i've also seen the good things having a laugh with them, a semi relaxed environment where people talk to eachother and generally have the same interest. I hope to part of  one of those fun proffesional game development teams one day. To become a Character or Environmental artist and work on tripple a title's. My ambition would be to work for Valve due the their extremelly well polished and great games ( Half-life series, Portal, Left 4 Death etc ) but there's a lot of other developers out there that make great games i'd like to work on. Who know's what offer i get after 3 years of study and where i end up time will tell.

A long way from home.

Here I am, sunny England. All the stereo types that people told me about the weather crushed in my first week of arrival. I'm Maarten a Dutch guy just coming from Dublin (Ireland) and now on my quest to climb up the ladder in England.

My background.

When I was still a kid I used to day dream allot. Together with daydreaming came the creativity however never having considered becoming an artist I'd rather be a pilot, go in the army or do something with computers. Little did I knew what the future would bring. as time went on I started messing around with Photoshop, flash and FrontPage which I later replaced with Dreamweaver. but while growing up you have to make decisions and one of them is what after high school ? My original plans were to become a network administrator which I wasn't too excited about but I simply didn't knew better. Until my girlfriend at the time asked me to come along to one of the colleges she wanted to see. It didn't take more than a few minutes before I was convinced. After seeing they were using video editing software, illustrator, 3ds max etc etc I was set on doing this course. As I progressed I figured I enjoyed 3DS Max the most so I often practiced this at home went ahead and tried to challenge myself.

After getting my degree in Multi Media design I decided to stop for a year. sort myself out see what I wanted in life and what the possibilities were considering I really wanted to become better in 3D modelling.
With this in mind I got in contact with Ballyfermoth college of Further education in Dublin ( Ireland).
They offered a Game-Design course (HND) covering 3ds max, The unreal engine, Unity 3D and more. 

So I left Holland and went to Ireland.  Once in Ireland things went well.
eventhough this course was more about the design behind games  i've learned allot from it and enjoyed my time allot. They taught me how to program, use several engine's such as the well known Unreal engine, Unity3D and more. I got taught how to model characters and improve the work i already had from before.

However, after graduation i knew i wanted to do 1 last specific study..... Game art.
Having read up allot on game development i knew there were a few options to go for. Canada,America or England. I chose for England due to closer to home and easier to move over to and started my search for a good study.

With help of the internet i came on the website of DMU. A good looking site with all the info i was looking for but most convincing of all was the youtube video where there was  portfolio work being shown and explained what would be expected and taught. This also gave me a good impression of the energy of the students and the environment they were being taught in. And so i applied but i still had a full summer infront of me. After a horrible time at the call center lady luck shined on me once more. One of my room mates knocked on my door telling me about a job in an (unnamed) games company which needed a dutch speaking person urgently.  A few minutes later i was on the phone. It appeared to be Activision i got the job and worked there as QA localisation for 3,5 months. Had an absolutelly amazing time there and learned ALLOT from how the games go in development and all the little bits and pieces that come with it. After my contract ended and me having said farwell to Ireland it was time to begin a new chapter..... England.