How to communicate difficult ideas? - That is the common denominator for many of my interests and career choices. I have always liked to figure out how things work and what could be a more intricate piece of machinery than the human mind. 

Studying pedagogy provides the ground principles of how wetware systems work and the methods for programming them. It is about trying to peer into the hidden worlds of peoples minds in the hope to understand them by theorising your own mental models about them. Conceptualising such high-level systems and trying to predict their responses and actions with limited knowledge can sometimes be seen almost like the art of divination. The attempt of trying to rationalise and direct minds can of course have significant ramifications, so it is paramount to employ harm reduction techniques in the form of compassion, empathy and ponderings about ethics. Overall it is about the attempt to understand the other and make yourself as intelligible as possible. 

Skills learned from visualising ideas, mostly in the form of 3D illustrations and art, provide excellent tools for communication. For me it is still a marvellous sight to behold when I manage to materialise ideas from my mind's eye for everyone to see. Using models and images is an excellent way to make almost any idea palpable and legible for everyone involved. Same goes with audio creation, it is another alternative language for changing ideas. 

Game design is about selecting all the necessary puzzle pieces and devising a plan of sorts about how to put them together in a way that would create the most impactful experience to the end user. The whole process is kind of like a larger and more complex loop analogous to any communication act - after devising what to say, you actually do it, get feedback about what the receiver understood and then correct the message, rinse and repeat until the right message is delivered. Every game teaches something, for me the most captivating direction in this field is the infinitely complex task of making games with a more specific educational value - serious games. 

In the end, during the process of trying to communicate something and attempting to understand others, I have also learned a lot about myself which adds another initially unforeseen facet to everything I do. 

Erich Brutus

3D Artist