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Year 2 IMG
Weekly Reflections
Week 1
What have I done?
This week, I started the Group Client Brief project and I started by carrying out a pre-mortem and this involved analysing my strengths and weaknesses going into the project. After this, I wrote a cover letter to apply for a job role for the group work and then began to write my Academic Paper researching into techniques surrounding my field that I applied for.
What have I learnt?
This week of the project, I haven't learnt much, due to the fact that most of it was spent carrying out tasks that I had previous knowledge on such as pre-mortem and a research report, however, I did get to work with a cover letter something that I had previously not used in a college setting. I believe that a large chunk of learning will come in the following weeks as we begin to kick off the project.
What could have been improved or gone better?
I do not think that anything could have been improved due to the fact that I was only present for the last lesson of the week due to illness, so other than not being in and out of the doctors and hospital then nothing else could have changed.
Any problems? If so, how will/have I resolve(d) them?
The only main problem that I encountered this week was not related to my college work instead my health, I missed the first two lessons of the week due to being in and out of hospitals and doctors, this was something completely out of my control, however, I have been able to catch up with the work and will be on track again by next week.
My targets for next week and the remainder of the project are:
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Continue to work to the timeframes given and also work at a continued high standard
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Move onto looking at my groups and planning our idea
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Move onto analysing the brief and understanding the clients needs and wants
Week 2
What have I done?
This week, I continue the Group Client Brief project and I started by learning about the group I would be working and also being presented with the brief and the initial idea of the concept by the narrative designer. After this, I collaborated on a pitch presentation which will be used to present the idea and then worked on a mood board and started designing concept art.
What have I learnt?
This week of the project, I haven't learnt much, due to the fact that most of it was spent carrying out tasks that I had previous knowledge on such as mood board and concept art. The only new knowledge I gained was learning how to use a drawing tablet, which has helped speed up the concept art production.
What could have been improved or gone better?
I do not think that anything could have been improved due to the fact that we are in the early stages of the project and most of the work was carried out collaboratively, I also feel that my independent work has not run into any issues as of yet.
Any problems? If so, how will/have I resolve(d) them?
I have not experienced any major issues that have delayed my work this week, partly because most of the work was focused on a research report and then planning documents.
My targets for next week and the remainder of the project are:
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Continue to work to the timeframes given and also work at a continued high standard
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Continue to expand on my planning documents and relay any updates / changes to the group
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Move officially into the planning phase of the project.
Week 3
What have I done?
This week, I continued the Group Client Brief project and I started by carrying out planning. This involved me creating several concept art variations of the assets needed in the game as well as environments and reptiles. In addition, I started to 3D model some of the assets such as enclosures and PC components.
What have I learnt?
This week of the project, I haven't learnt much, due to the fact that most of it was spent carrying out planning and starting the production of the group project.
What could have been improved or gone better?
I do not think that anything could have been improved due to the fact that most of the time was spent planning and creating my 3D models, however, I will need to improve my sculpting skills in Blender in preparation for modelling the reptiles.
Any problems? If so, how will/have I resolve(d) them?
As I have stated, I have not run into any issues this week.
My targets for next week and the remainder of the project are:
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Continue to work to the timeframes given and also work at a continued high standard
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Continue to 3D model my assets and look at texturing them
Week 4
What have I done?
This week, I continued the Group Client Brief project, I continued 3D modelling the assets needed for the Vets, Groomers and Interior Items for the enclosures. I also started to texture my completed assets in Adobe Substance.
What have I learnt?
This week of the project, I haven't learnt much, due to the fact that most of it was spent carrying out 3D modelling, however, I did learn a new piece of software, Substance Painter. This was fairly easy to understand, all I had to do is set up a UV in Maya and then paint the model in Substance.
What could have been improved or gone better?
I do not think that anything could have been improved due to the fact that most of the time was spent creating my 3D models, however, I feel that I need to improve my texturing techniques to better improve the art style.
Any problems? If so, how will/have I resolve(d) them?
I ran into one issue this week, that being unable to login to Google, I was unable to connect to the server but after refreshing the page I was able to login.
My targets for next week and the remainder of the project are:
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Continue to work to the timeframes given and also work at a continued high standard
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Continue to 3D model my assets and texturing them in Substance
Final Evaluation - How I met the Brief
For this project I was asked to take on the art role, to create concept art, 3D environmental items and textures for a client brief, more specifically the brief was to create an educational game about teaching the player how to look after a reptile and the negatives that come with neglecting the reptile, without being too realistic. For this project I worked in a group of seven, one of the requirements of the brief was that each member of the team took on a different role to simulate a studio workplace, there were two artists, two game designers, two programmers and one narrative designer.
The brief that the narrative designer was given at the start of the project outlined all of the requirements for the project and these included: The game must be used as an educational tool to show how to care and look after a reptile, the game must also feature several reptiles which the player can choose the start of the game, and finally the game must use a cartoonish art style and feature the reptiles that sold at the client Essex Reptiles. As I focused on art, most of this effected the planning of the narrative and game designers, however, I relied on these roles to figure out the assets that I would be needing to create for the game as well as the art style and textures.
Looking at the specific points of the brief, I believe that I have met the requirement of including many reptiles and environmental assets in the game because I planned and modelled an array of assets for the game, as I focused on environmental assets, I did not have the responsibility of modelling the characters so overall we met this requirement but I did not personally. Amongst the assets that I created in order to met the requirement of the brief were, several enclosures that were needed for the requirements of each reptile and also upgrades to meet the narrative designers brief. I also modelled several versions of interior assets for decor in the enclosures, this is something that the narrative designer set out in the brief, so I ensured that I modelled different versions that could be purchased and added to the enclosure for decorative purposes.
In terms of the whole group meeting the brief and not just me on the art side, we managed to create a game where you purchase a reptile of the players choice, put them in an enclosure, buy upgrades and decor items and take them to the vets and groomers. Overall, I would say that the group was successful at meeting the requirements of both the clients brief and also the concept of the narrative designer.
Final Evaluation / Post Mortem -Personal Performance
Looking back over the five weeks of the Client Brief project I feel that my performance continued to grow as the project progressed, I was able to continue my work performance and dedication from the last project, despite being given an artist role, and continued to work to a high, professional standard, I feel that my performance in this project greatly outweighed that of the last project. I feel this because I was able to improve and test my 3D art skills by 3D modelling over 40 assets and textures within a two week development phase, my research papers were more concise and to the point of my job role. I also feel this because I was able to successfully carry out extensive experimentation and planning into concept art, time management and also group communication.
This project was set to us with a five week deadline and we were tasked with working in a group of seven, working toward a set client brief, within the group we applied for a job role from the following, artist, game designer, programmer and narrative designer. I was given the job role of artist as this was the only role left and the brief that we were given was from Essex Reptile, who set us to create an educational game where the player cares for a reptile of their choosing.
Context
Looking back at the Context stage of this project which was very brief, I filled out a Project Proposal, this was an important document for this project and also previous projects because it allowed me to outline my skills that I previous have that would help me complete the project and how I acquired them, this was very helpful as I was able to evaluate my skills, this also helped the narrative designer plan a concept that was tailored around each team members strengths and weaknesses.
Overall, I have been completing Project Proposals since the first project in the first year and by now I have become used to how to fill this document out and thus I was able to complete this document with no faults and use it appropriately to find my strengths and weaknesses going into the project. I feel that I was consistent in this document and my performance allowed me to complete this document with no issue, I do not feel that this document would need improvement and my performance does not need to be improved.
I then evaluated my work standard and accessed problems that could arise during the development period of the project in the form of a pre-mortem, the pre-mortem was an extremely important document that I feel was paramount to access, overcome and avoid potential problems that could delay the project and stop me from completing the project on time. Overall, I feel that this document was helpful in planning the problems that I could face and helped me to avoid the problems during the development of the project, this document could be expanded in future projects and improved during development however, I feel at this stage this document was helpful at the size that it is.
The final document that I created in the Context stage was evaluating the working practice in the last group project and how I could improve and learn off of that going into this group project. This was a very helpful document that I created because I was able to assess the group workings in the last project and identify issues in communication and work flow so that I could improve going into this project, I was able to see that communication was a large area where the group failed so going into this project I assured that I would improve heavily on communication and I feel that I and the team have been successful on this, we setup a Discord server which allowed us to communicate at any point during the day and we also carried out team meetings. This helped us to plan and effectively communicate ideas and keep track of progress in the team, overall, I feel that I was able to improve not only mine but the teams communication.
Research
Moving onto the Research stage of the project, I carried out a research into Colour theories, shape languages and also a Technique report into concept art and the theory of emotions from colour. The research for this project was very important and only made up a small section of the project, I was able to gather a large amount of information and techniques from this research and I feel that without this research I would not have been able to create as detailed concept art of final assets and textures, so I feel that my performance in this section was on par to that of the other sections and did not need to be improved too much.
I believe that I was consistent throughout my research reports and I was able to maintain a high working standard and performance, this helped me to evaluate the effectiveness of each technique and theory, allowing for better planning going into development. My performance does not need to change either because I was able to complete the tasks with little issue and the evaluations made in the reports set me up nicely for the planning and experimentation of the group outcome. Upon reflection of the academic paper, I found that no areas really stood out to me for improvement because my research was concise, consistent and also detailed enough to compare, contrast and draw conclusions from, so I do not feel that my report would need improving. In addition, I was able to carry out effective planning and experimentation from the concept art techniques that I researched, so I feel that my work and working standard helped me to significantly improve my planning and experimentation.
Planning
Looking at the planning stage of this project, I feel that I was able to create detailed and effective planning documents thanks to the help from previous knowledge and also my research into concept art and design theories. My research into Concept art techniques and historical references helped me greatly when creating the planning documents required because I was able to build upon my previous knowledge on concept art, allowing me to produce detailed and varied art that helped me when it came to creating a pitch presentation, showing off my ideas to the team and also when it came to production of the 3D models for the game. In addition, just like all previous projects, I produced a time management document this was a Trello Board, I utilised this tool more than any previous project because I used two boards to manage my time, one for the two artists and another for the whole group.
These two project management documents helped greatly throughout each stage of the project and helped significantly with production and planning because I was able to see what assets or concept art my fellow artist was creating so that I would not repeat the same assets that they were working on, in addition, this also helped the team as they could track the progress of each member resulting in an easier method to track the progress of the project and its many subtasks.
This project required a larger amount of planning documents, however, as an artist my main focus was Concept art, Pitch Document and Branding Pack. The first document that I created was a Pitch Document, this document explained the group concept and detailed what the project would entail in terms of mechanics, theming and artstyle, the creation of this document ran smoothly thanks to the collaboration that took place to fill out the document, I focused only on the art pages as this was my main job role of the project. The pitch document was very important at helping us to plan our project and nail down the mechanics, theming, artstyle and idea of the outcome to allow us to present the idea concept to a group, (we did not present the document to anyone, but if we had too then we would have been prepared, as we focused on the tasks that only involved our job role).
The pitch document was carried out to the highest standard and I believe that my performance was on par to that of the rest of the project and I believe that the document and my performance does not need to change, because my pages on the document were detailed and showcased the art concepts concisely. The pitch document paired with the planning created by the Narrative designer allowed me to stay on task and effectively see what assets I would need to create and in what artstyle for the project, without this I would not have a concise list of assets or unified artstyle idea for the project resulting in a less planned outcome.
Moving onto the Branding Pack, this project required an artist to create a logo and colour palette for the game, this responsibility fell onto my shoulders, I feel that this ran smoothly and quickly without faults. I created a logo using Canva and then chose a colour palette taking inspiration from reptiles and their habitats, after discussing designs and game names we finally settled on our final brand pack, as I had previous experience on brand packs and logo designs I think that this section of planning ran as smooth as possible, and I am extremely happy with the final logo that we settled on as well as the colour schemes and font styles.
The final and in my opinion largest section of the planning was concept art, as I was one of the artists in the group, my main focus on planning was concept art. I created several concept art ideas based upon the game concept written in the GDD, and thus was able to produce high standard artwork that helped me to showcase my concepts to the Narrative designer and also collaborate with the other artist going into modelling. Thanks to my extensive research into concept art techniques in the planning phase I was able to improve upon my previous concept art working practices in this project, helping me to produce the large amount of environmental and character concept art needed. I am very pleased with my concept art as I had improved upon previous skills and was also able to model assets off of my concept art to the standard that I had planned. Overall, my working practice throughout the planning phase far exceeded previous projects and because of this I was able to produce such a vast variety of concept art that visualised the project idea to the art style that we had chose.
Experimentation
Moving onto experimentation, the experimentation in this project was drastically different from that of previous projects that I have carried out before, instead of carrying out experimentation before production in this project the development was the experimentation. As an artist my main focus on production was modelling and texturing, this was classed as experimentation because I had researched into different concept art techniques which helped me to plan the assets before I made them and putting the techniques and theories into practice.
As stated my main focus of experimentation was 3D modelling and texturing, as I have previously worked with 3D modelling software I ran into little setbacks and problems, this helped me to focus my time on creating the assets for the final outcome than resolving issues and problems because I had previously reflected back upon issues and improved my work approach for a smoother development time. In terms of my 3D models and textures, I am very happy with the outcome of these and I feel that I could not have improved anymore than I previously had in the field of modelling for this project, as I had successfully modelled over 50 assets each with the same care and attention within the timeframe of the development phase. I was able to correctly model the assets to the low poly artstyle that the group planned and I feel that my modelling skills greatly improved over the course of the project and my work has since improved form previous projects.
Looking at texturing, I am happy with the textures that I had made for the assets in Substance Painter and the timeframe that it took to design these still fell within the allotted time, so I am pleased that I was able to create these textures with little knowledge and experience within the timeframe allocated. However, in terms of improvements, I feel that if I was to carry out experimentation again I would look into more Texturing techniques in the research stage to further stretch my knowledge and improve my overall texturing styles and work practices, to further push the quality of my textures, however, as of this project I am happy with the quality of my experimentation, textures and 3D models for the time period that we had.
Outcomes
Moving onto the final outcome, I planned my time accordingly throughout the various development stages of the project and this helped greatly going into production and also the quality of the final outcome. As an artist I was only responsible for the art being put into the game, so the models and textures, I spent the entire development time focused on modelling and texturing and I can say that I am extremely pleased with the outcomes that I have created. My assets and textures match the brief and client requirements perfectly and are unique in an stylistic way that they stand out amongst over games and assets within the game.
I am extremely pleased with my project outcome because I was able to plan and create an array of assets and textures to the highest of quality that I have worked to before, thanks to my planning, experimentation and also previous knowledge I have been able to successfully carry out this project to a very high standard on par with that of my previous projects, I am now more concise and detailed with all aspects of my work and I am pleased that I have progressed this far.
However, if I was to highlight any improvements I would say that if I was to complete the development of my outcome again I would experiment more into texturing as I felt that my textures and designs were lacking in character, so extra development in this area would significantly improve my textures.
In conclusion, going into the FMP I will aim to carry out more extensive research, looking into new techniques, work styles and theories to further expand my knowledge and help aid experimentation. I will also aim to carry out more research guided experimentation to both stretch my knowledge and also to iron out any issues and problems before moving into production, to reduce the amount of time spent on problem solving. Other than these two changes I will continue to work at my high standard and work ethic because I feel that my pace and detail has been consistent not only in this project but also previous projects, so no changes will be needed to my performance.
Looking at the whole group outcome, I would say that I am significantly underwhelmed by the outcome that we created because although I completed all of my work to the best of my ability I feel that some members of the team did not. As I have said before in my reflections and written outcomes, in the playtest version of the game none of mine or my fellow artists assets were present in the game even though the hand in was of that Friday, I received no feedback on my art and I feel let down by my team as I had completed my part and they had not fulfilled theirs. Following the feedback, some of my assets were put into the game by a programmer however, I feel that they left it too late and rushed the implementation, as they were only put into the game two days before deadline even though the assets have been readily available to all team members throughout planning and development. Even though some of my assets have been implemented into the game, a large majority are still missing and no textures that I made have been fully implemented, this saddens me because I have put a lot of effort into creating and designing my assets and feel let down that the game looks bland and unfinished because they have not been bothered to put my assets and textures into the game correctly.
This has taught me that group work is not always what it seems, collaboration is a large part of development but if the team members are not willing to work then the outcome will feel bland and unfinished. As you can see from the attached outcome video on the Outcomes page, the game still feels unfinished, but if you compare this to the outcomes that I have created in the experimentation tab you can see that the work that I have made does not match what the programmers and designers have put into the game.
