The new direction; Keep it simple, stupid!

Last week I returned from a week long trip to Sweden. And during this trip, I did a lot of thinking about this graduation project.

Before I went to Sweden, I had a lot of trouble starting up. I just didn't know where to begin. I was having a hard time deciding my focus of my supportive narrative. Feedback like "vague" and "convoluted" made me realize I was probably thinking too hard and making things too complicated. As the left visualization figure shows, this project had too much going on.

So at the beginning of this week, I contacted Sonja to talk about this issue. As soon as we started talking about my project, something became clear very rapidly; as I said before, it was overcomplicated to say the least. Different target audiences, doing concept work for two different media and the adaptation of an ancient story. I can undoubtedly say I'm not an expert in any of these practices. Plus, there are two, maybe even three projects hidden within this premise. So after some discussion with Sonja, we decided to make it simpler and more straightforward.

The new direction goes as follows;
- How can a Game Artist use design techniques from the animation field to strengthen his design work for games? 
or
- Which design techniques from the animation field can the Game artist use to inform his design work for games?

So what basically happened is that instead of creating these two vastly different products for two different media (which is a heavy load to begin with), I narrowed my approach down.
I'll use the researched techniques of the animation field, analyze and compare them to games. Then I will implement them in my current expertise (Which is making artwork for games). This way I can focus my efforts creating something unique.

In short; The project has become a more practical one and I have this feeling this could actually work. The funny thing is that this new direction is actually what I wanted to start researching in the first place. But of course during making the proposal I made things overly complex and lost focus.

Next post will be about a questionnaire which I'm preparing for some animation students. Cheers!