At Full Sail, you’re expected to put your best foot forward and push towards being a great artist. Recently, I’ve been wondering if I’ve been doing just that. From the beginning of this year up until now, I’ve been able to live a dream of mine that I regret ever having. To experience the “Groundhog’s Day” effect. This dream very much like the nightmare that the movie and a much more gruesome anime named Higurashi no Naku Koro ni show it to be. The character(s) of the show are reliving the same month over and over again until they find a way to survive past it. The events that happen are usually different every time.

Now you might ask, “Nilix, it’s not physically possible to relive the same month over and over again. How could this have happened to you?” You’d be right. In real world terms, I haven’t. However, Full Sail students have a different standard of time. Whereas other schools progress by semesters, we progress by months. Every month is a new set of classes and you are required to pass every single class to move on. So when you fail, you’ll automatically be rescheduled to retake that class within a month or two. Now, I’m the kind of guy who doesn’t like watching the same movie more than once in a year. Imagine retaking a cram class 3-5 days a week with mandatory 4-hour lectures where the instructors pass the same knowledge, coupled with the same jokes, and the same exercises as the last time around. Now, imagine retaking it a third time and this time, it’s at 5am in the morning.

Since the beginning of this year, I have done this with three classes.

Staying down here for an additional 7 months worth of rent and having to pay to retake those classes (which are all more than 1K each) wasn’t the easiest things to try and explain to my mom. And with my GPA disrupted so much, I’ll have to work super hard to get back up. But I find that, with every terrible thing comes some kind of good, so I’ll be sharing it with you. I am going to tell you the collection of reasons of my failure.

1: Not knowing what I’m doing (Requirements)
Knowing what you’re doing is the first step to anything. But sometimes we overlook things, or make light of small matters. This ties in with point 4 which you’ll read soon enough but I’d like to start by pointing out the most basic of the basics. Know what is required of you and you will succeed. During my second pass of Level Design, I was the Lighting Artist. One of the issues that resulted in my failure was the lack of Post-Process Effects. It DID cross my mind that I needed to do them. However, somewhere along the line I decided that “Our level looks fine without them. And I was right, even the Course Director said so. However, the fact still stood that I didn’t do them. which contributed to a good amount of points being lost.
Moral: Do what you’re told to do. If you think it’s unnecessary, at least notify the person in charge. You could probably work something out.

2:Not knowing (or adhering to) when things need to be done (Time Management)

This actually goes without saying. I don’t think I need to jump in depth on this. But to accentuate the concept a little harder. The only reason why I failed Advanced Game Characters was because of late work. If any of the assignments I handed in late were turned in on time, I would have had enough to pass. But when you fail by .5 in a class, you still fail. Always make the effort to be punctual and get your work in when they are expected. As a side note, never take a point for granted. The majority of my failures were only by 1 or 2 points.

3. Not knowing what my team needs to do, and what they are doing at the moment. (Team Dynamic)

This kills me inside, really. Group projects are something you either love or hate. And if you hate them, you shouldn’t be making games. There was always a point in time during Level Design where something went awry. The first time we had a member take a Leave of Absence in the first week. I had to switch to his job as Level Designer and the transition was hard. While everyone else had blockouts of their level, I was studying my notes and learning how to move objects in Unreal. The slow start got to me and while I eventually caught up, the milestone grades were so low (and my individual grade which I talk about next topic) that a decent final grade wasn’t enough to hold us up.

The second time around, we had a team member who was too unmotivated to work. Although, our Level Designer was much more competent and made it look awesome, our first milestone and my 3rd individual grade bombed terribly. It came to the point were I needed to average around 80 points between the level and the lighting to pass. However, he left during our final crunch day. I ended up failing by one point which could have been easily remedied by him tweaking the few things he had to work on. However, I can’t fully blame him. There were a number of things I messed up on that could have pushed me up.

Moral: Your team is your lifeblood. Remember, you are also a part of it. Try to keep them motivated and active and you’ll steamroll through your projects. Keep tabs on what they’re doing and make sure they know what you’re up to as well. If possible, try to learn what they’re job is and how they do it. In the worst case scenario where a team member leaves, you’ll at least be able to pick up some of the work they dropped.

4. Not knowing how to do my job (Personal Skill):
When I started Level Design class, I knew how to unwrap UVs, prepare them to be textured. I also understood how to paint them. The problem? I did not know how to do it well. I’m pretty technically minded, so modeling objects and preparing them for Photoshop was pretty simple. However, I didn’t have a workflow for texturing. I was exceptionally unprepared for the start of the class where the first week was worth 40% of our grade, and a good amount of it was based on our ability to texture five objects that we’d also have to make within that week. I partially blame Full Sail for this for not having a dedicated texturing class beforehand, (Art Creation for Games taught tools and a few methods, but no solid workflow. Two of the three assignments were just “copy what you see”) but the problem was still with me and how much I was able to do. I had to wave goodbye to 14 points on the final grade, which wasn’t motivating in the least.

That wasn’t the only time this happened. In fact, I think this is the main reason why I failed any class here. And every time I look back at every one of those classes, I know I could have passed had I only asked someone for help.
* Not knowing how to layout UV Maps for Character Design and Creation.
* Not requesting a critique on my ZBrush Bust during Production Modeling.
* Not asking for ENOUGH critiques in Character Animation (especially since I knew that I was terrible at it)
* Asking too late in Level Design about the quality of my textures.
Same problem, different classes.

Moral: Ask questions. Ask for critiques. Ask for better methods and solutions to situations. You’ll learn a lot more about what you’re doing. Not only that, but you might end up showing other people new things. Other people can learn of your methods as well as learn from your mistakes. If you don’t know what you’re doing, or how to do it, ask for help. Even if you know what and how, ask for critique. Opinions matter in our industry. Our job is to amuse others after all.

Things can go wrong easily. With anything. As of now, I’ve finally passed Level Design and Adv. Game Characters. I’m working on passing Shading and Effects for Games (which has been changed to a dedicated texturing class due to popular and constant demand. W2G Full Sail) and it’s been going pretty smoothly, however the crunch is coming ever so slowly and I really need to push my work harder and faster in order to make the 9am Saturday deadline. The problems I listed are all pretty basic and they’re known to make or break projects. In my case, it broke my grades. So please, take the time to make sure you understand how important it is.