For this phase I will talk about my overall experiences with this project.

First thing foremost, I would like to thank Meng again for the amazing feedback and time spent on this mentorship, without her patience and critical insights, I would not have been able to learn much without her help. And a thank you to Judy Snaydon as well for always helping the program host our mentorships.

Overall I’d like to say that it was amazing being able to connect with professionals around the world, I definitely think this should be open to future years so we can broaden our network of who we can contact.

I’d say this mentorship project is probably the most fun I’ve ever had in IDEA, being able to create your own briefs and working alongside someone that knows your field is something that anyone would really dream about.

What did you learn?

I learnt a lot of things, not just technical rendering or how to design characters, but I also learned about potential avenues for illustration and also received some insights on what it meant to be an artist and how to constantly improve yourself without being demoralizing to yourself. I was happy to have made a friend out of this and happy that I was able to push myself further.

What was most rewarding?

The biggest reward for this project was honestly the project itself. Being able to do what you want and have professional feedback from it is anyone’s dream.

Whatw as the most challenging?

I’d say timeline wise the mentorship project felt a bit whack at times. It could just be me and my specific project (There was a lot of drawing and ideating at the same time), but ultimately I just declared my own schedule and worked alongside that. Other than that, the usual project management and balancing school with mentorship was quite challenging, but I managed to pull through.

Oh and, my drawing tablet broke down a week before the final hand-in, so I had to polish the final illustration with my mouse! It went alright, but it was fun to try and make do with the tools I had.

Self assessment

Overall, with all the work I’ve done, and the result of it, I’d love to give myself a 10/10. The constant pacing of ideating, executing, and presenting each week to my mentor was challenging, but I pulled through and did some really nice work that I think shows my skills and creativity when it comes to character design. Working alongside my mentor as well was a blast, since we both learned about concepts that we wanted to explore as well. Often times, the concepts that were explained to me by my mentor was also explained to her co-workers when they wanted feedback from her, resulting in a win-win situation.