Little disclaimer I will try to treat this blog in a more casual manner than I would academic essay. J
 I’m Kamil. I’m from Poland and spent most of my life there. For the last 3 years I’ve been studding Game Design at UCLAN. Doing a BA degree was a lot of fun. More fun than I expected it to be. Of course, there was a lot of work, moments of struggles and staying up till late hours. But when you do something that you like, that is not an issue. And learning new things about making games or painting concept arts is something that I like a lot.

For the past 3 years I focused mostly on the field of concept art. I devoted a lot of spare time to practice painting characters and environments, and do them whenever I could for my assignments. Even though I can’t claim to be very good at it, but I think I’m decent and develop a lot in this time period.
 Comparing my works from the 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd year of BA progress is noticeable. Though I can’t bring myself to like any of my old work now, and see only mistakes in them… But I guess that is also a sign of development.

I have a lot of interest, but tend to be very critical of the products or art that I experience. So even though I try to experience a lot of things I rarely find something that I enjoy to its fullness. I’m interested in philosophy, psychology, history, science, architecture, historical clothing and armor, books, films, different forms of art and storytelling. Games too.
Books are the medium I enjoy most, more than films or games. They are the purest form of telling a story.  And if written well they can provoke very strong emotional reaction. Unfortunately, I’m not one of those people who can read very fast so I haven’t as much books I would like to, and my experience with them Is very limited compared to what is out there.

As an example I’ll give the Witcher book series by Andrzej Sapkowski. They are some of my favorite books.  (They were written way before games were created. ) Even though the story takes place in fictional, fantasy world, it feels very real and believable. Author ask a lot of questions about the reality of the world we live in and human nature. He does not give one straight answer, he doesn’t force his world view on the reader, rather he shows examples of answers through his characters’ world view. But more than anything he encourages readers to think for themselves. And that last thing is why I give this book as an example, I like when medium encourages reflection. Though I know not everybody want or need that.

As I grow older I shift my focus from flashy action scene to films and tv shows that try to explore humans psychic and have some message. Nowadays it is hard for me to enjoy films with a poorly written story, even if they have exceptional visuals and great designs. (superhero films won’t get love from me) Same goes for anime or animated films. Fortunately, there are still great examples of films and shows that know how to combine intriguing, free of plot holes story with beautiful and smart cinematography. Or films that acknowledge the fact that they are films and play around with formula. I list few examples:
“True detective”
“5 centimetre per second”
“The Wolf Children Ame and Yuki”
“The Shawshank Redemption”
“Grand Budapest hotel”
“Birdman”
“Girl with Dragon Tatoo”

This post is already quite long, so I’ll write about games and games mechanic that interest me and might influence my work in another post.

My Initial idea for my MA is to learn how to create an experience that will hopefully resonate with others. During my BA I mostly focused on the art site of creating games and I want to continue and expand upon this. I don’t want to create game with complex, mechanics or hard to master gameplay. And to be honest, I’m not sure if I can. I’m not someone verse in UE4 blueprint, so I’m aiming at something less complex. I want to grow as an artist, I feel comfortable with 2d, but there is still a lot I can and want to learn about creating assets in 3d and making levels. And MA gives me an opportunity to do so.

 I want to create a 3^rd person game, in fantasy setting, but not similar to anything we can encounter on earth. It might be based in a realm of the gods/different dimension. I would like to focus on narration through the environment, not text or speech. Something similar in atmosphere to Shadow of The Colossus and Journey, abandoned, beautiful land. One of my main objective is to create moments that make people say: “this is amazing”, or “beautiful.” However vain it might sounds. I would love to create a big level or few levels, but I would rather have 15 minute long good proof of concept than something long and unfinished. Since most of the experience will narrow down to traversing the level I’ll have to make movement very enjoyable.

To achieve my goals I’m going to look at examples of shots, compositions for films and how they arraign space to tell a story, what trick do they use to make shots that amaze people, or grab their attention and try to apply that to 3^rd person perspective camera.  The film industry is a lot older than games so there should be more research  materials that can be useful to me, but I’ll try to find some strictly related to games too. I’ll be looking for books about photography, composition, filmmaking, games, and level design. Probably watch lots of documentaries concerning these subject. And tutorials about 3d sculpting, modelling.

So that’s the plan.