The DMU Rookie

Hello my name is Marc Pinkney, I’m 23 and studying Game Art Design in my first year at DeMontford University. I’m not sure if you would class me as a mature student but I guess I am a little older than everyone else on my course. I’m a very outgoing person who enjoys any type of social and my two biggest passions are sports and Art! I’m from the small city of Southampton on the coast. From the age of around 6years old I have always been a very keen swimmer and found to have a great technique, talent and ability. This progressed through the years and I found myself competing at club, county and national level.  During this time I gained a NVQ level 2 in a plumbing apprenticeship. Although this trade taught me a lot in the 4 years I worked I knew it wasn’t what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.

After a lot of hard saving from plumbing I finally had enough money to go travelling around various countries I wanted to see. I started in the very hot east coast of Australia, setting off in Cairns and making my way down to as far as Sydney. My next stop was Bali, Indonesia. To me, visiting Bali changed my life, I experienced a whole different culture, learnt how surf which is now a sport I am very passionate about, met so many interesting people, learnt how to manage and organise myself as well as money and found out what I really wanted to do in life.

 Whilst travelling I had a lot of spare time on my hands and decided to start drawing. I would sit on the beach or hotel an draw random things I found of interest. I really enjoy drawing, it relaxes me so I find myself scribbling away for hours, this is when I knew I needed to find a career in art. After travelling around a few more countries for example Africa and Asia I managed to enrol myself into my local college so I could study an Art Foundation as I knew I couldn’t get straight into Uni.

I thoroughly enjoyed my Foundation course and gained a lot of inspiration from my tutor who also attended DMU. I learnt new skills and techniques from life drawing classes and knew what direction I wanted to end up in. As soon as I researched DeMontford and the gaming course I didn’t want to go anywhere else, in comparison DMU offered exactly the right combination of things I needed as well as being a skillset accredited course.

I love being a student at DMU, I enjoy the Visual Design, Game Production and Critical Studies. I guess I like the prospects that are available from the course when graduated as well, this is definitely the right course for me and I can’t wait to see what exiting projects we will be given!