When I grow up i want to be a cucumber???

We’ve all been there. Ask a room of 6 year olds what they want to be when they grow up and you’ll get some pretty standard answers.

“A Cowboy”
“An Astronaut”
“A Cucumber”

No the last one isn’t a joke, a kid really did say that to me.

For as long as I can remember I’ve always chirped that I wanted to be an Artist. Little did I realise that the industry of Artists is actually quite varied and specialised. For example when I went to college I was faced with a choice of fine art, graphic art, art and design, the list went on.

But then for a while I didn’t really want to dedicated myself to a particular area. I do remember a phase where I wanted to be a Zookeeper but seeing as I wouldn’t go anywhere near my guinea pigs’ hutch, I decided to leave that fantasy behind and moved on to ponder a career in science. Unlike some unfortunate people I was never really forced down path in my education. I was an all-rounded student, encouraged to do well in every area but Art was always my true calling.

I have been playing games for as long as I can remember but strangely most of the time I was more interested in the art-work in the instruction booklet than in the actual game itself. It wasn’t until I played ‘Jak and Daxter’ in about 2005 when I realised that I wanted to work within games. I was truly inspired by Bob Rafei’s work and after some helpful research, I discovered that my dream could come true. Game Artists existed and better yet, I could study it at university.

But now I’m here, I have to ponder the next stage in my life, what do I want after university?

Well to aim high, for starters, being an Art Director would be the ultimate achievement of all my hard work. But to be a tad more realistic I’ll have to start lower down.

When I first started I wanted to be a character artist but that’s all changed now. Weeks of drawing landscapes and buildings have made me appreciate environment artists more as I like creating and capturing both a vision and atmosphere in an image. I have yet to find the passion to become a 3D artist. I mean I love texturing and watching Ben Mathis really inspired and awed me, but first I need to click with the actual model building. But I have a feeling that 3D art is a serious possibility for me and I had never even considered that before coming here.

So when I consider what I want out of university, I’m going to approach it the same way I approached school and college, instead of forcing myself down a specific path, I’ll embrace and strive to do my best in every aspect of this course and when I ‘click’ with a certain module or find a hidden passion for modelling, then I will grab the opportunity with both hands and enjoy the ride.