Creative students conclude their studies at Caledonian Creates exhibition event

The Applied Games department recently hosted the annual Caledonian Creates exhibition, which invites final year students to showcase their final projects to fellow students and industry professionals.

On May 22, students and industry guests came together to celebrate and recognise the hard work of students from the Digital Design, Computer Games and 3D Animation programmes.

Students had the opportunity to showcase their work in the form of digital graphics, posters and games which could be viewed by industry professionals, friends and family.

Final year Digital Design Student Luke Ashton had the chance to share his work at the event and even designed the branding for this year’s exhibition, which was displayed across campus to help advertise the event.

“The experience was super cool, especially since we work in such a digital medium. Having everyone's work pinned up around the room, such as posters and magazines, made everything feel  much more real.” Luke explained.

As well as showing his own work, Luke really enjoyed getting to witness the work of his classmates in such a visual way. He said: “It was so great to finally get the chance to see everyone's work. Throughout the year, you don't really get the chance to see the full scope of everyone's work, so having the opportunity to show off everyone's hard work was really eye opening.

After we were finished with our Honours Projects, no one was really in the mood to compare notes and look at what each other had been doing, so it was such a lovely opportunity to kind of celebrate being done with all of that stress.”

Luke especially enjoyed getting to see variation of work produced by his classmates, as well as appreciating the work of students from different programmes in the department which include Computer Games and 3D Animation.

He explained: “This course is so interdisciplinary. Being able to see where people have taken their work and style, which included posters, print, motion graphics, websites and apps, was great and really showed off the diversity of skillsets on our course.

Not to mention the 3D Animation and Computer Games students next door, of which all of their work completely astounds me. Since we have very little interaction with that course, being able to see the culmination of their years at GCU compiled into one display was crazy.”

As well as having the opportunity to celebrate each other’s work, students have the opportunity to network and develop connections with people from their industry. Luke explained: “The industry interaction on this course is great, and things like guest lecturers, the mentoring scheme and other events like Creating Conversations have set us up with a fantastic network of professionals.

I also think that being able to interact with industry people felt completely different to me, at the Caledonian Creates event. Being able to confidently say that we had finished and are now ready to put our skills to good use felt really good.”

By Rachael McAlonan

Got a SCEBE or GSBS story? Email me at Rachael.McAlonan@gcu.ac.uk or connect with me on social media