Central Station

Greetings fellow creatives

I felt it was about time I updated this profile, and actually start making a more regulary appearance (with blogs & whatnot)

Anyway, as I mentioned when I joined Central Stn, I was kinda in a transitional stage in deciding what I actually wanted to 'do' now that uni was over (graduated from Uni of Abertay with a BSc Computing (Games Development).

That course was more 'tech/code' heavy whereas I had decided the more creative side of that area was more appealing to me.

After the first 3 months, and the 'first wave' of job applications came back with no progress, I decided to think about what else I could do, what I wanted to do and how I'd go about doing that.

The more and more I thought about it, the more appealling the idea of 'knocking down the walls' of my focus towards games design to the much wider realm of design became.

Over the past few weeks I decided to 'have a go' at graphics design since I did some of that a few years back in college on a multimedia course. Got hold of QuarkXpress & a few open source packages (Inkscape, GIMP, etc) and started doing a few tutorials to get me used to things.

Decided to put my skills to the test and design a few things for christmas presents (being a graduate without a job, buying stuff was hard). Made a Japanese-themed calendar for my sister (she likes her manga/anime) with months/days in Kanji, Romanji & English, a few important dates, etc and a couple other things. Nothing major, but added to my experience, well receieved too. :)

Over the holidays I was kinda struggling to decide what to do next, mainly cos I had nothing to focus on. I wanted to 'design stuff' but didn't no what. So I decided to look for sample projects to do or briefs to respond to. Stumbled across 99designs.com which was pretty much what I was looking for, a bunch of briefs for different things (tho mainly logos) with winning designs getting the 'prize money'. (I submitted my first 'entry' on Sunday, wish me luck!)

At first I didn't respond to any of them, but I did keep a few pdfs of briefs that interested me so I could think of some ideas, and at least have a portfolio piece at the end of it..as well as the experience or responding to briefs..something I've done before with games-related collaboration projects I've been on, and enjoyed

I also found out recently (2 weeks ago) that my 'hand drawing' was better that I thought, as I was planning out what I was gonna go on paper before trying to replicate it digitally. I've not suddenly become an 'artist' but I was drawing a few 'shape-based' characters & some 'isometric' 3d-style images. (

basically, doodling but with a bit more focus on what I wanted the thing to look like...or what I could make outta the shape I just drew. made me wanna get my hands on a graphics tablet to see if I could get a few of these 'things' onto my mac. I haven't yet (still no job yet) but i probably will soon...we'll see how that goes

as with the job hunt, I attended a Graduate Workshop last week, run by Dundee Uni for grads who hadn't yet found work

it got me thinking of more 'pro-active' ways of finding work (networking, work exp, voluntary work, etc) and helped me create a 'job search strategy' for next 5-8 month (if it takes that long)..basically means I'll trying to add more and more stuff to my portfolio, attend careers fairs, industry events and network myself more

these leads neatly onto here, where I hope to upload portfolio work too as it comes in and also network with other creative people (both locally & globally) and hopefully keep a look out for people wanting to collaborate/share ideas/just chat with other creatives, especially in my local area once I've got a few things to show.

basically, I've started to get into this whole 'design' thing & have a good idea of how I want to pursue it, stay tuned for hopefully a more colourful profile to come in the coming weeks.

Cheers

Marc Madill

My disciplines
Designer, Programmer,

Location
Inverurie, Aberdeenshire, Scotland

Website address
www.marcmadill.co.uk