Currently listening to: Various Instrumentals by Hans Zimmer. Some of note: The Holiday OST, Prince of Egypt OST, and Muppet Treasure Island OST.
It's mid-November so I think it's about time to announce my goals for this month as well as reflect on how I went last month. Why have I taken so long to write this? Well, due to taking the first week of the month for MIGW (Melbourne International Games Week), which you read about here, I then took another week to recover, reflect and write about my experience. It was nice to take the time off though I did find myself itching to get back to game development after spending two weeks away.
But enough about MIGW, how did I go with Octobers goals? Overall, I say I went reasonable well. I achieve most of my base goals;
~ Complete base mechanics of the new project: I was able to meet the goal I set which was to get the base mechanics done. I would have been able to further develop the project if I didn't waste time trying to make the art look amazing, however, it did allow me to add some much needed good quality art to this website's gallery.
~ One page of sketching per day: I wasn't able to meet this goal as a lot of my time was spent working on the art for Talkative Tea Maker. So I was still drawing, however, it was individual pieces rather than focusing on practicing human poses like I originally intended.
~ 4 posts to the blog: I only posted 3 times last month which was a bit of a disappointment. I started writing a few articles but time seemed to slip away and I didn't have time to finish writing them.
~ Re-establish my work schedule: I was able to get back to my normal schedule of work, starting work at 9am and finishing at 4pm. One thing I do have to be caution of is that I do stop working after 4pm. I find myself sometimes working on something till 7pm at night and I know that is a quick way to burn myself out.
I felt like I got four-fifths of these goals done this month. Yes, I could have done better but I am pretty proud of this result considering how large all of these goals were. My whole point of last month was to see how much I could do and I plan to do the same for this month.
My new goals for this month are as follows;
- Finish Talkative Tea Maker: By the end of this month I want this project completely done including the Visual Novel elements and basic transitions. I will be amazed if it can be done but I'm going to try my very best to achieve this. This time NO WASTING TIME ON ART!!!
- Work on body construction and poses: I've changed this goal a little since last month. Although I intend to practice each day I think my focus should be on what I want to improve rather than the amount of time I put in. So this month I going to try and improve my human proportions, angles, and different poses.
- Finish Part 2 of Curse of Monkey Island Puzzle and Hint Analysis that I started writing. Draft version: I started on this new project last week and have already finished part one. Basically, this document I am writing is an analysis of all the hints indicated through the dialogue of how to proceed in the puzzle. This means using every possible combination of items, environment interactions, and dialogue options to see what clues may be revealed. The reason behind doing this is that I want to see and note all the time we a lead down a pathway without realising.
- 4 blog posts: My final goal is to write up four blog posts for this month, the same amount as last time, which I believe will be reasonably achievable as I have already written up three posts this month about MIGW and I have plans for at least two more posts for later this week.
I feel more comfortable with the goals I have set, though I believe that these goals are a lot more demanding than last months. This is mainly due to re-establishing my old schedule and I believe if I stick to it, I'll be able to achieve all of my goals plus more.
It's mid-November so I think it's about time to announce my goals for this month as well as reflect on how I went last month. Why have I taken so long to write this? Well, due to taking the first week of the month for MIGW (Melbourne International Games Week), which you read about here, I then took another week to recover, reflect and write about my experience. It was nice to take the time off though I did find myself itching to get back to game development after spending two weeks away.
But enough about MIGW, how did I go with Octobers goals? Overall, I say I went reasonable well. I achieve most of my base goals;
~ Complete base mechanics of the new project: I was able to meet the goal I set which was to get the base mechanics done. I would have been able to further develop the project if I didn't waste time trying to make the art look amazing, however, it did allow me to add some much needed good quality art to this website's gallery.
~ One page of sketching per day: I wasn't able to meet this goal as a lot of my time was spent working on the art for Talkative Tea Maker. So I was still drawing, however, it was individual pieces rather than focusing on practicing human poses like I originally intended.
~ 4 posts to the blog: I only posted 3 times last month which was a bit of a disappointment. I started writing a few articles but time seemed to slip away and I didn't have time to finish writing them.
~ Re-establish my work schedule: I was able to get back to my normal schedule of work, starting work at 9am and finishing at 4pm. One thing I do have to be caution of is that I do stop working after 4pm. I find myself sometimes working on something till 7pm at night and I know that is a quick way to burn myself out.
I felt like I got four-fifths of these goals done this month. Yes, I could have done better but I am pretty proud of this result considering how large all of these goals were. My whole point of last month was to see how much I could do and I plan to do the same for this month.
My new goals for this month are as follows;
- Finish Talkative Tea Maker: By the end of this month I want this project completely done including the Visual Novel elements and basic transitions. I will be amazed if it can be done but I'm going to try my very best to achieve this. This time NO WASTING TIME ON ART!!!
- Work on body construction and poses: I've changed this goal a little since last month. Although I intend to practice each day I think my focus should be on what I want to improve rather than the amount of time I put in. So this month I going to try and improve my human proportions, angles, and different poses.
- Finish Part 2 of Curse of Monkey Island Puzzle and Hint Analysis that I started writing. Draft version: I started on this new project last week and have already finished part one. Basically, this document I am writing is an analysis of all the hints indicated through the dialogue of how to proceed in the puzzle. This means using every possible combination of items, environment interactions, and dialogue options to see what clues may be revealed. The reason behind doing this is that I want to see and note all the time we a lead down a pathway without realising.
- 4 blog posts: My final goal is to write up four blog posts for this month, the same amount as last time, which I believe will be reasonably achievable as I have already written up three posts this month about MIGW and I have plans for at least two more posts for later this week.
I feel more comfortable with the goals I have set, though I believe that these goals are a lot more demanding than last months. This is mainly due to re-establishing my old schedule and I believe if I stick to it, I'll be able to achieve all of my goals plus more.