Progressing on from the first year comes the second year. Second year is said to be the defining year of university as a year has passed for you integrate into your course, your new friends and location in first year, meaning you have sufficient experience to get the most out of the university experience just before major projects and dissertations take over your life in your final year. And second year of university has so far been the best experience of my life so far as it has opened my horizons and myself as a person even further.

Most of the photos seen in this post has been captured on my Samsung Galaxy S4 camera using the stock camera app, some were taken on my iPod Touch (5th gen) for times my phone was depleted of power and a considerable amount were taken on my Nikon D3300 DSLR.

So without further ado here is my second year of university photo diary!

September 2014. Moving out again! This time with more things so we had to take my uncle’s family carrier.

My entire family came along with me as I moved so I took them down to the coveted beach after dropping off my stuff and showed them around!

Fish and chips noms down at Harry Ramsdens by the beach! Really expensive fried fish but worth it!

With me finished unpacking I was all settled in! With 5 other house mates living in a student house situated in the heart of Winton, the house was really good being only a 7 minute walk to the uni campus and Winton high street. The only downside was the extortionate rent and the proposed raise if we continue to live there the next academic year.

Korean imported drinks! Very fortunate to have Seoul Plaza (a Korean import food shop) in Winton as I got to try out loads of cool drinks from Korea!

The garden in the aftermath of a wild house party we had.

BFX! Bournemouth’s fresh visual effects and animation festival for the second year running now hosted at the BIC! The second year running we were fortunate enough as animation students to get free tickets to attend live talks and presentations from workers of the industry and have the opportunity to talk to recruiters.

Mahjong! A few of my friends were interested in starting up a mahjong society so I decided to join in for a few games (even though I have never played the ancient game before). After playing a few rounds as I learnt how to play I can see how this game has stood the test of time and generations.

The Cambosse fire display garden was taking place around October time by the Lower Gardens in Bournemouth so I thought I’d check it out with coursemates. It was also a nice opportunity to try out and get to grips with night photography with my still-new Nikon D3300 DSLR. You can checkout the photos I took of the display on my Flickr!

Walking around parts of Bournemouth and came across a bridge over some rail tracks!

Many KFCs were eaten at odd times of the day throughout the year.

Getting creative with my breakfasts by mixing and matching leftover and expiring foods.

Thought I’d try something new and learnt how to make home made wedges! Quite a simple process though not a fan of handling oil. That stuff takes ages to wash off your hands.

The view outside my bedroom.

Typical state of our kitchen.

During our rare downtimes we go out to Slades Farm and played football on the fields as a way to get outside!

Tried baking apple crumble!

A snapshot of my bedroom on a normal evening.

 

Watching Tokyo Ghoul at the Anime Society! Great series before it gets to the second season.

Defacing an Aston Martin in one of our Mari workshops.

Ham, off-brand chocolate spread, jam and humous.

One thing I’d like to do sometimes is to walk a different way to uni instead of the usual way. It refreshes your exposure to your surroundings and makes you more aware of the area.

MCM Comic Con! Attended both events throughout this academic year though now I only really go just to meet up with people I’ve talked to online in social media.

When you treat yourself to a slightly more fancy oven pizza from Lidl.

Trying out McDonald’s speciality burgers they occasionally put out several times a year. Out of all the special burgers they made not one has ever wowed me.

Walked around Poole on one of my days off during “Reading Week”.

And in a related photo but not deliberately coincidental a photo of one of my rough clau sculpts from our maquette workshops for our character design assignment.

Our living room became a set for a week to film for our cinematography assignment we had to complete at the start of the year.

The outside of our house!

The many toy guns our house started to stock pile after filming our cinematography assignments.

At the start of the year I took Japanese lessons at the Japanese Society. Had to pay a lesson fee for the term though the price was very cheap compared to private Japanese tutors! The lessons were always informative and not only we learnt Japanese through textbook exercises but we also learnt about Japanese culture from our Japanese sensei such as social etiquette and customs. Unfortunately I had no choice but to quit came the second term as I was plummeted with 5 assignments going on at the same time in January.

Attended MCM Comic Con in Birmingham! Quite a smaller convention compared to London’s but it was nice travelling to Birmingham again after visiting numerous times in the past when I was younger to meet family relatives.

We had a series of camera acquisition workshops to learn how to set up a green screen stage to film live action footage for visual effects! This was based in room PG25 at the Talbot Campus before it got moved to an offsite location in 2015.

Free Wacom Intuos pens! We were given them free as they began installing Wacom tablets on every computer in the computer labs.

Rigging for the first time ever on a two-dimensional fox for a game jam me and my friends took part in!

A big Christmas tree in the Talbot campus atrium that changes colour based on certain hashtags people posted on social media!

Typical state of my bedroom as I pack up some things to take home with me for Christmas break.

Back home in Ipswich for three weeks over Christmas! Watched Ipswich Town play against Middlesbrough as my friend had free tickets!

Was half a good idea and half a bad idea going to Westfield Shopping Centre in Stratford post-Christmas as the place was filled with shoppers hunting down post-Xmas offers.

Not forgetting the post-Christmas travel chaos as people return back to work and school.

Back in Bournemouth and for the first time since I started uni – snow! In Bournemouth! In the south of England! It was only a light sprinkling however and the snow melted away by morning, but it was a sight to see as I have never seen snow in Bournemouth – let alone snow at all in recent years.

Sketching out character designs for the character design assignment while eating dinner! It was truly crunch time in January 2015.

Grilled pork steaks for dinner!

Clay maquette for my character design complete! Didn’t expect to sculpt this out so quickly.

Taking some photos of sprouting flowers in the garden as we entered Spring!

Rigging hands for our animation group project.

Nothing better than leftover takeaway curry for breakfast.

Testing out deformation for my character rig for group project!

Motion capture workshops!

Attended the Chinese New Year event hosted by the Chinese Society at uni! Was fun watching all of the performances.

The morning of the Group Project deadline day. I was deprived of a night’s sleep as I took this picture.

Went to my coursemate’s summer house in Devon for the weekend after group project finally ended as a breather from all the work that had to be done over January.

Tried out the Oculus dev kit my friend was using for one of his projects! Nearly vomited from motion sickness playing an unoptimised Skyrim.

Stone baked steak pizza! Was out in London for a day meeting with online friends.

Walking through London at night sure is a relaxing experience, minus the stabbing part.

Re-arranged my room a bit so the table is now facing the window! This gives me more horizontal room space to roam about.

Tried making home made burgers! They turned out quite well.

Did some volunteering work where we cleared away old plants, bushes and trees to make way for a community garden area!

A wild fox appears outside campus!

A snapshot taken to symbolise my experience seeing the total solar eclipse on March 20th 2015. It was really cloudy in Bournemouth at the time so we didn’t see the eclipse at all. At least I got to see it on my phone live-streaming BBC 1…

Nice shot of Bournemouth beach as Spring came so we came down more often.

Nicely lit shot of my bedroom on a Sunday morning.

Filming animation reference!

Tried out long-exposure photography outside in my garden on a random night. It was only after this experience when I realised how many stars could be visible in the night sky if there were little to no light pollution.

I like taking shots of the setting sun obscured by the clouds, it looks really striking and always lookds good on camera at any angle.

Underwhelming duck ramen at Wagamamas before watching the second Avengers movie with people from the Anime Society.

Behind the scenes photos of my compositing assignment!

More volunteering work! This time sorting out donated goods in a charity shop.

Tried out the live test fire sessions before the release of Splatoon, it was for this very reason that I ended up buying a Wii U at the end of the year.

Another calm shot of the beach.

Nice shot of the sea while walking down the beach sand.

Snapshot of one of the many visits to ‘Spoons.

Visited Southampton for a small conference about the video games industry.

New mouse! Been rocking the classic Logitech MX518 for a couple of years now and thought it was time to upgrade. Because a mouse is something I use daily it was worth the investment in buying a more premium mouse, and with that in mind I decided to get the MX Performance Mouse.  Quite pricey but it’s the best mouse I’ve ever used to date.

Horses!

If there’s one thing to do in Bournemouth, it’s roasting marshmallows and food over a fire after hours on the beach.

As a way to celebrate getting through second year of university, I went and got a Wii U to play Splatoon!

Went to Norway for a week with coursemates! It’s been many years since I went abroad so it was really exciting for me to finally visit a new country after so long! It was truly an unforgettable experience to round off the second year. You can see a selection of my photos I took in Norway on my Flickr!

The living room on my final days living there.

My empty room as I leave Bournemouth for the Summer, concluding my second year of university ;__;