“I am able to bring my ideas and creativity to life”
Milen has always been interested in digital computer design, so he always knew his long-term goals were to get into a career involving creating ideas, designs and concepts.
Milen attended an Open Event at Barking & Dagenham College to explore his options and was blown away by the facilities. The Games Art & Animation course also fit perfectly with the skills he wanted to learn more about.
In his course, Milen has a lot of creative freedom with his projects – being able to explore many ideas and really bring ideas and creativity to life. He also loves creating animations, as they are very visually appealing and adaptable.
As well as support from his tutor, he receives a huge amount of support, particularly as he’s having to highlight his skillset and improve on the ones he’s not strong on. For example, Milen wants to improve his artistic skills – he's good at generating ideas but not so strong on producing the visual. He’s got many tutors who teach him, each one specialising in something specific, so he’s enjoying being able to gain insights from all of them and learn. Milen feels very encouraged and supported when it comes to building his knowledge.
Milen has improved on many skills at his time here and says, “I’ve improved on my basic understanding of general art, as well as programmes such as Adobe. Adobe has a wide range of digital programmes and before I came to college, I only knew the basics, like photoshop. I can now add extra programmes to my CV, for example, Adobe Animate, After Effects and Express. Having this experience has allowed me to boost my creativity even more and, in the future, explore different job opportunities in the creative industry.”
Milen has had the opportunity to be part of an Amazon Web Services competition, creating a product that produces a solution for young people. This has been a great opportunity for Milen and is now able to put this on his CV, which he is very proud of.
On top of his studies and competitions, Milen is also a student rep for his course area, where he’s enjoyed being able to look into feedback and make a difference around the college. He likes that BDC is great at listening to feedback and then making those changes that can benefit everyone.
Once Milen has finished his course, he’d like to go to university and study Games Design.
“The facilities here are great, as well as the people. It is a completely different setting to secondary school – more freedom and responsibility and I like that. There’s also always someone available to help and to support you.”
