Now, for this year I actually secured a half term time for Tech Hub, and each LTI day I would go to New Media Manitoba for Tech Hub from 10 AM to 3 PM. In the first week of Tech Hub, we basically went through ground rules and what we will be expecting from Tech Hub. We also went on a tour of the Exchange and learned the history of the buildings around the Exchange (Nahum should’ve been there and I have no clue why we needed to do that). In the following weeks of Tech Hub, we basically learned about subjects that will help us with any sort of media we want to create during that time in Tech Hub, whether that being a game we can interact and play with, or a cinematic video with animations creating and using the things we learned in the cinematography class. 

We’ve also been learning about shortcuts in Unreal Engine such as the W key for rotating and the R key for scaling, as well as Blender, but I had already learned a lot in Blender in the summer class I had done over the summer break for about 2 weeks. What I’ve learned through the time I had gone through Tech Hub is a lot, let me just,

Composition

Cinematography

Rule of thirds grid

History of video games

What goes into game development

The stages of game development

Environment design

Level Design 

Thumbnailing

A process called blockout stage

There is a lot more that I have learned, but I will pick out one thing that I had learned, which is the rule of thirds. The rule of thirds is basically a grid the has three sections going horizontally and vertically, creating 9 rectangular shapes. Now this grid can really help with composition, such as using the grid to decide how big your character would be on the screen while you’re playing the game. Using the lower third section to put where the character will be can make it seem as if your character is weak and powerless compared to something like making the enemies fill up all three sections vertically creating a scary atmosphere and an anxious feeling knowing that these enemies are much bigger than the character that you are controlling.  

What skills did I realize I had?

It hasn’t been far into the year, and I haven’t realized I have any new skills than I had last year. Though, I would say, I have gotten better at creative thinking and writing, because of Tech Hub. Through Tech Hub, we’ve been learning and talking about an introduction to what we’ll be expecting, and we were actually supposed to have our machines a week after Tech Hub had started, but we ended up having them after a whole month or so I think. In Tech Hub we would do these little activities and we would use the things we would learn that day, for example, cinematography, we would use something like composition and how we would incorporate that into a game then pitch it the class, and I think really got pretty creative during those times. In the long run, I think it could work well for me to stand out as an artist and think in a unique way with having meanings behind my artwork or even having a special art style. 

What skills do I think I need to have?

I think there are many skills that I need to have. A skill I believe I would need to have are technical skills such as programming and learning how to fix an error that is happening to the computer and I do not know how to fix it, that could be a roadblock for me if I don’t know how to to fix it, it will become an even bigger problem for me and I will get stuck. Yes, programming is something I will learn in Tech Hub I believe, but we will be learning blueprints instead which is visual scripting. I think this could really help me in the future if I am wanting to be involved with Tech Hub next year.

I believe another skill I would need is just generally being able to be more confident in more work and not second guess myself, because even if I am wrong there is always room for improvement. I think the biggest conflict for me when I am having that problem is, that it really sets my self value really low, and I even end up changing and entire thing just because I think I am wrong.