Graduates - George Worrall

Where and what did you study? 

I went to Leeds Beckett University and studied Mixed Media, it was in a sense very broad which was great for me. I didn't exactly know what I wanted to go into. I started off by doing Business for a year and dropped out of that within six months. I basically really wanted to get out of home and live in Leeds. I had no clue what I wanted, so I switched over to this course which was unfortunately affected by COVID for the first year. Which was all online and a bit crap, it was learning the basics of a whole lot of stuff. It's a very good course though if you are planning on going to university and not quite sure of what to study. You touch on graphic design, 3D and you sort of take charge of where you want to take your work. A lot of skaters I know are not sure about uni but with this course you can take a project so if you wanted to relate it back to skating you could most of the time. 

Why did you choose Leeds as a city to move to?

I had a couple of friends who had already moved to Leeds since I took a year out before moving. I visited and probably the same for a lot of people, I went to Hyde Park and thought I just want to live near this good skatepark haha. 

When I went for the induction i really liked the city and it felt like a nice place, i was already getting on with a few people in the scene too. A huge thing for me was that the Coventry skate scene wasn’t going so great and it was becoming somewhat of a sad place to skate for me, a lot of my friends had moved away so it felt as if the scene was getting smaller. The Leeds skate scene was really welcoming and nice.

Since you dropped out of your original course and moved onto Mixed Media. Did skateboarding inform your choice of either degree?

I had started the business degree and Leeds got me skating even more alongside that I was playing with graphic design which was heavily skateboarding related. I got so much more out of doing something creative that it informed my decision to take a different course, which was totally the best call for me. It was certainly a weird one.

What was your final project?

The project overview was a mixed media with the overall theme was ‘demonstrating how skateboarders value public spaces in Leeds’ with supporting materials. I mocked up three 3D rendered spots: Playhouse; Sovereign Square; Cookridge Street (Henry Moore) , a Zine and a short documentary about skateboarding in Leeds. The main thing I was demonstrating was how you can change areas to fit skateboarding in. 

Doing a mixed media course did you have to mix it up?

It was all down to the individual's choice. I wanted to do a mixed bag of things to share all the skills I have. The 3D rendering was the main part, it definitely took the longest. I had to build those environments because I really want to go into 3D modelling and animation. But I thought by going into physical (the zine) and video elements (the doc) as well as the 3D work if I started getting burnt out by any side of the project I could just move onto another. 

The tutors never set a specific task, they just said to focus on something you’d like to do in the future. By working on all these different elements I managed to keep things fresh for myself. 

Did you have to research into materials and layouts when you put together the 3D visualisations?

It was very much just visualisations and how it looks rather than going in-depth on materials. That’s another side I could have gone into, the placement of the obstacles was certainly not as thought out. The Light spot for example was the most rushed and the first, I was on a timeframe where I wasn’t quite sure how to work it all out. Cookridge Street render looks more like a skatepark strip than a developed space with intentions to skate. In the end the body of work is to demonstrate space 

Did you have to put together any research for something so hands on and not theory based?

Yeah, we had to write a pre-production essay on the topic which is called a Research Report. I had to do a 3000 word essay on ‘What are the considerations for designing public spaces for multiple groups, and how can skaters use these spaces along with the general public?’ so that was lots of research into skateboarding and public space and the conflicts around skateboarding. It was a mixture of Ian Borden, Malmo’s integration of skateboarding through skate-friendly obstacles and Love Park where something can be important to public space and it gets stripped away.

I had two surveys which used the broader question of ‘Do you think public spaces are important’ and ‘Do you know of any public spaces with multiple uses?’ which were asked to skateboarders and then the general public. 

I guess you can call them research methods, they helped inform how the documentary, zine and 3d renders were created. 

Was a lot of the final project just you demonstrating what you can do?

Yeah exactly, for the project and my university tutors the overall space demonstrates how I can model everything from the obstacles to the buildings on the side. They look at the entire 3D render from a critical eye whereas a skater will hone in on the spot. My tutors really liked the project, it was just difficult to get them on board with the skateboarding side to it just because it hadn’t been done on our course before. A lot of the questions were ‘What are you actually doing?’ because most students were making consumer based projects like products or brand identity stuff. 

Would you like to take this sort of work you’ve done for a university project  into skateboarding? 

It's a mixed bag I don't necessarily want to go into skateboarding. I really enjoyed building these projects, especially the 3D visualisations of public spaces. If I wanted to do that for a job I’d have to learn so much more, I’d also have to consider the architecture side of things too. I’d love to make environments or props whether that was texturing or building for video games, that's something I've been trying to figure out. 

Saying that, I would definitely like to work on skatepark plans or spots 100%. But I wouldn't say that's my driving factor for 3D work. 

Would you recommend the traditional higher education route?

I definitely would, you end up with so much debt though. Ultimately it's what you want to get out of the course and how you apply yourself to it. You can work hard and tailor projects to something you're interested in then you can get so much out of your university course.

Then again it can be a waste, I still think sometimes that instead of university I could have gone to college and maybe got an internship and made my way up. There’s a lot of online courses for 3D and animation that you can take instead of university as well. I do recommend it, it's a great experience especially if you move to a new city. Leeds is/was a huge part of my life and i’d love to move back. I might have contradicted myself a lot there but it comes down to what ifs and if it's the right fit for the person.