My time at Direwolf Digital was an enlightening one and I think I got much more out of it than I ever expected walking in. The first day was daunting, to put it lightly, and every day in succession was just as wild. Unfortunately I never met the goal of finishing a piece in two days and honestly looking back at it I had to return to a very native state just to meet the quality standard. You learn a lot of techniques and skills in school and on your own you think you execute them correctly but you'll come to find that you weren't as in-tune with your art as you thought you were. For me this wasn't the only thing that I found needed checking up on. More of my time at home and school was spent fretting over time and time management as things started rolling along at the internship. I honestly wish that I had taken care of that more gracefully than I had but things happen and after learning what does and what doesn't work I believe that in the future when opportunities like this arise I will be much more prepared.
As far as art goes, we learned what my weaknesses were very quickly and in the next two terms I intend to practice a couple of things to get to that optimum speed AND quality for painting (and... all art in general!).
Of highest priority are-
-Environments, both in correct perspective and creativity. Environments that correspond with what is happening in the composition and compliment the subject matter. Environments in environments on environments with some more environments.
-Thumbnail readability and stroke economy (which needless to say stretches across the board)
-Depth and volume; stepping out of that flat realm.
-"Unobvious" color schemes. This is something I personally want to take to the extreme and experiment with after reading Gurney's Color and Light, particularly the side-by-side strokes of complimentary colors.
Aside from those, everything else could use working-on too but I noticed when I finished my last image at the internship that I created a roadblock for myself with these particular things on every image.
Of course there was plenty of positives that came out of this despite my jumping right into what needed working on. In fact I couldn't list everything I learned there but I have never been more obsessed with improvement than I have upon entering the internship. I pushed my art further than ever before and as a result actually conceived some finished images. By the time I can show them though, I want to produce some seriously amazing shit. I'm excited for the future, as always, and while I need to run off for now I will be back to work before school even starts trying to optimize myself and my art.
Aw yea, things are going to get really intense around here.
