Rambling About Myself.

SPIDERMANNN

My name is Clare Mitchell; I am 5ft1 and a half inches tall, nineteen years old, currently studying Game Art Design at De Montfort University Leicester and I really, really hate writing about myself. However, I do love to write and even though my much-loved English Literature teacher would probably be vomiting at how horrific my grammar and writing style has gotten over the past year, I’m glad that these blog tasks exist to help me get back in touch with my internal English geek. As you can probably tell I adore books and adore the poetry of Alfred Lord Tennyson. His use of language to create imagery in The Lotos-Eaters and Choric Song (one of my favorite poems of his) is so beautiful and extremely inspiring. I could probably ramble on about that for ages so moving swiftly on…

View of Bedlington from
the Pit Heap

For the past 19 years of my life I have lived in a small mining town in the North-East of England called Bedlington, it’s about a twenty-minute drive north from Newcastle (if there’s no traffic, which is rare).  I haven’t really travelled much in my life, so I always knew that I wanted to choose a University far away from my roots. Now I’m here, away from home and absolutely loving it, but Bedlington holds a huge place in my heart, and –much to my mam’s delight- my accent doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. True to the Geordie stereotype I am generally loud, outgoing and partial to a drink (winey wine wine not Broon Ale, the standard drink of the Northerners.)

I am the proud owner of two older brothers who are 9 and 12 years older than me. I have a lot to thank them for as they’ve both influenced and supported me so much, although it is definitely their fault that I’m so manly (that, and the fact that I’ve spent my life being called “son” by my Dad). It’s probably pretty obvious at this point that I owe my initial interest in video games to them. We were a proper Nintendo family; I vaguely remember playing the NES and the SNES, but the Christmas that we unwrapped the Nintendo 64 I recall rather clearly even though I was so young. Many nights of my childhood were spent watching my brothers playing on Goldeneye, Mario Kart and of course, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time –I get the impression that many “gamers” of my generation also hold this as their nostalgic baby- until I was eventually old enough to play and complete it on my own. I even still have a book at home containing game designs from when I was 6 years old; its pretty much just Zelda with rabbits, I was young and really liked Watership Down at the time haha, sad child. So, that was my beginning, and from there my love for games just grew.

The thing I really loved about LOZ: Ocarina of Time was the illusion of vastness that the game gave me; I’d been thrown into this amazing world of fantasy and it was up to me to explore it. I loved the characters, the colours, the environments, the music; everything about this game just fascinated me. Being a very tomboyish child I always loved playing outside in the woods behind my house; running in the fields and climbing the trees and I was captivated by how in touch with Nature many of the locations in this game were; for example Kokiri Village, where the houses were built inside trees and a river ran through its heart. My young imagination just lapped up these ideas and environments.

Kokiri Village from Ocarina of Time

As for my educational background; I studied Art at GCSE and at A level, however, the course was very relaxed and independent and I was largely allowed to do as I pleased. As a result of this, I continuously picked subjects that kept me within my comfort zone, usually opting to draw people from photographs or my imagination and often adopting an anime style. My interest in this initially came from watching Dragon Ball Z, Beyblade, Outlaw Star and Pokémon as a child and teaching myself how to draw in such a way. Although the style is generally frowned upon on this course (to put it lightly) I learned a lot of what I know about anatomy from studying my own body or reading books when I was searching for reference for my drawings, so I am thankful for that even though I’m now trying to iron that style out in favour of something more individual.

My love for Pokemon hasn't died with age

I was accepted into De Montfort University with an unconditional offer, but after deciding that I wanted to develop my artistic skills, I deferred my entry and got myself a place on an Art Foundation course at Newcastle College. I stayed on the course for 3 months, but I found the teaching somewhat pretentious. It frustrated me that I would spend hours on a painting, worrying about colour choice, anatomy and style, only for it to be skimmed over in favour of someone who’d blown their nose on a bit of tissue and handed that in as a final piece (or something similarly ridiculous) No offence to Fine Artists, I’m sure that there was loads of hidden meaning behind that snotty tissue.  In any case, annoyance, lack of any real guidance and an Operation that caused me to leave the course for a few months lead me to decide to drop the course and concentrate on working to save for university over the next 9 months. For me, this decision really paid off’. Not only did I earn a substantial amount and get a taste of working for a living, it also gave me time to clear my head and think about the choices I’d made concerning University, moving away, et cetera.  After being determined to get onto this course ever since finding it when I was fourteen, the fact that I would be starting it in a mere few months was suddenly very daunting to me. So now here I am, and you’ve read about my very boring journey to get here.

Lovely Rainy Bradgate

So far, I’m absolutely loving this course; it’s everything that I wanted it to be, none of it has disappointed me. 3DS Max is a massive pain in the arse but I’m sure that in time I’ll learn to love it (hahahahaha) and hopefully create something that I can be proud of. In the future –although it terrifies me to think ahead- I would truly love to be designing characters for a games company like Bioware, or even working in animated film. Just the idea that something I had imagined could be given life and loved or hated by others, to me that is utterly amazing. There’s definitely a very long path ahead of me before I even get to that stage though, but it excites me to think of what I’ll be capable of at the end of this course (wishful thinking!).

Apologies for my tendency to ramble and my love of overusing punctuation (especially the wonderful semicolon) In any case, thank you for putting up with me so far and for the next 3 years!