Evaluation
Animation Year 2, 2nd Project
Group: Goda Jonaviciute, Logan Swift, Connor Smith, Samuel Capp
Vertical Slice
Tasks and Criteria
Evidence Asked
Evidence Provided
Task 1: Research – LO1, LO2, LO3
You should begin by researching games in
your genre.
You should research and analyse the type
of audience that you will be creating your
game for.
Analyse games for that audience from both a visual and contextual point of view, what are their characteristics?
Genre research
Audience analysis
Visual research
Find inspiration from an artist or designer and analyse their work for effectiveness.
You should aim for a mixture of primary & secondary research.
Research must be Harvard Referenced.
Harvard referenced bibliography
Task 2: Planning & Design – LO4, LO6
Your design stage will be shared between team members but should still follow the basic structure you usually do.
Narrative structure
You should develop the narrative structure via treatment sheets, character analysis etc.
Storyboarding
You should create a storyboard for any animation you may create.
You should create some preliminary sketches. These sketches must be annotated.
Annotated rough designs x 20 - 30
You should develop several of the best ideas into developed designs. You must have accompanying notes as to why you have chosen these designs.
Developed Stage – Developed designs with screenshots and development rationales.
Finally you should create your final piece/s.
Final design/s. (Story, Models, Concept art, GUI, Splash screens, Title cards, Credits, Controller layouts, Textures, Animations, Environment, Vehicles, Weapons, Effects, Maps, UI designs etc.)
Task 3: Evaluation – LO5, LO8
You must critically reflect and evaluate the research and design process. This may be submitted written, typed or as an oral video blog.
Complete Evaluation
Evaluation
GJ:
Overall, this entire project has been like a long lesson to me. I've learnt a lot of things; I need to save regularly, I should organise my work strictly, and other things. This was my first experience of working in a group for a project, I enjoyed it in some aspects but in others I found it difficult to handle. When working in a team, there should always be someone in charge to make sure people are up to date on their work and that everybody is on the same page. Our group didn't do this, so I tried my best to handle what that role would do without self-appointing myself as the leader. This did mean that I wasn't taken seriously a lot of the time, which frustrated me, but I had to deal with it regardless. If I work in a group project again, I will try to enforce a leadership role to a person within the group for more efficient work. In terms of creative work, I managed to learn a lot of skills. In my previous project, I tested out using Blender but stuck with 3dsMax as it was what I was used to. For this project, I ended up stepping out of my comfort zone and strictly used only Blender. It took a little bit of time to get used to, but I'm glad I stuck through my frustration and learned a new program that I ended up liking even more! Although I didn't have the chance to experiment with proper and detailed textures using Substance Painter, I managed to learn a lot about shader nodes and how they work, resulting in me executing the vision we planned as a team. I'm glad that I have managed to stick to my target of better time management and expanding my skill set, becoming comfortable with a new 3D program in just about a month.
Our theme was chosen as a team to not be too ambitious whilst also being able to show our individual strengths to put together a final piece that satisfied all of us. The painterly style stuck to us most, being hugely inspired by Arcane and it's art style. I was also inspired by other things, like Ghibli movies and the world of Infinity Nikki, to create work that fits into the atmosphere that we created as a team. I spent some extra time in college during this project, outside of my regular hours, to make sure I am caught up and on the same track as everyone else. Being in a team means I absolutely must be on time otherwise I risk bringing the project down, this responsibility on my shoulders meant I was on task and focused. Issues in our group were resolved quickly and we managed to keep good communication throughout, regardless of disagreements. During the work, I was constantly reflecting back onto my concept art and initial ideas, whilst also looking at my peers work to make sure everything was in line and fit together. I think over this project I have learnt a lot, and have progressed much further compared to the beginning.
SC:
I have enjoyed this project a lot as it was very fun and I was able to put a lot of my skills to the test also learning a few new ones. I believe as a team we worked very well as we didn’t have any huge arguments and respected each other’s opinions/ideas. For this project I was forced into using a new software in blender which I found struggled with to begin with but eventually learnt it and found it easy. I Believe I used my time effectively to an extent, this is because I get distracted easily or sometimes just can’t be asked to do work thankfully, this didn’t affect me too much as I managed to get all my work done with time to spare; however, sometimes I get really focused and am able to work for hours without getting distracted. In this project I really like how majority of my assets turned out as they looked really good especially with the texturing on them; another thing I really liked was how my scene looked as the colours blend really well into creating this painterly theme I also, like how the fire brightens everything up and makes the colours bolder. If I could go back and change anything it would be not forgetting that the theme for our game was painterly and not realistic as this wasted a lot of time because I had to go back and change all the textures I had already made; another thing I would change is how basic the animation in my scene as there’s really not much to it apart from the fire burning which is because when I imported the shadow man it caused blender to lag therefore, making me unable to add anything.
The research that I did really help me as it give me a better understanding of the weaponry used during the medieval period which then made it easier to create the weapons; throughout the design process I was constantly referring back to my research and concept arts which really helped me. The artist I researched Pei Gong had a minor influence in my work as he has created art pieces with similar textures as the ones I made. I have learnt many new skills over this process such as sculpting in blender which Is something I had never done before but now I understand it and sculpt relatively well; I can use these skills in my next project which is FMP and even further with university.
CS:
I am very happy with the work we have all created as a team, we were able to make our trailer longer than one minute which I was proud of, I learned so much creating this project from blender modelling to after effects post compositing and sound design.
By making our game stylised I learned that something doesn’t have to look realistic to be great, it just needs effort and a solid structure. Speaking of structure, I believe that is something we as a team lacked, if we planned out every scene to take a certain amount of time, I think the ending of this project would have been a lot less stressful and rushed.
In FMP I would like to plan out everything I would like to accomplish in a timed manner so I know how much work I will be able to do in the time I am given, I do also feel that our team could have been more organised because there were a few scenes that were made last minute that I had to spend extra time compositing which dug into my time for compositing the trailer. I wish I also spent more of my personal time on this project because I would have been able to accomplish a lot more in the time we were given, I would also like to take that into FMP this year so I can fully use my time to perfect my project. I would have also liked to have given at least a week to go through all the work we have made and check to see if we have missed anything and also proof read through the whole project to fix areas that don’t sound right and spelling errors.
For everything I learned in this project I am happy with what I’ve learned and I feel I am ready to face FMP this year and I believe that I would be able to get a distinction. Something that we won’t do again is burn the edges of our map to the game, it got way out of hand very quickly and was a mistake but a fun memory. I am most happy on the skills I learned on after effects because I am able to make simple scenes into professional scenes that look way more vibrant and colourful, I am also very happy about my skills on using lens flare, and also dabbling in a bit of coding in after effects to give a lifelike shake onto the camera. For example, the crumble craters scene is just a single frame that I have added lights, a sun, camera shake, zoom to make it into a 3 second masterpiece.
Lastly, I am eager to find out our grade from this project as we all have put a lot of effort into and I am proud of myself for how much I have learned and how many new things I have tried.
LS:
To conclude this long and tough project I had a lot of fun making everything I did, and I will miss this a lot. I had a lot of moments of doubt and dread but I overcame everything in the end and made something I think is quite decent. I feel as if this project really pushed my 3d modelling skills in a bright direction, I learnt valuable sculpting skills that I doubt I would have learnt better in another project. I had a lot of fun with my friends and I couldn’t have asked for a better group (even if Sam slacked off). I will definitely miss the creation of this project and working as a team to make something we were all really passionate about and putting our 100 percent into. Approaching time to start our fmp I realise how much better working with a team is compared to by yourself and I am feeling worried that I won’t know how to cope working by myself. I feel like at some points I was letting my team down and creating sub-par work that kind of sucked. I also think that I had bad communication skills with my team mates and at some points I just ended up annoying people and ruining the fun for everyone which make me quite upset. The main thing I was gifted through this project was a new sense of purpose in life to want to get the job of a lead character artist. I have found a genuine passion for sculpting and it is really something I would want to pursue as a career and I don’t think that I would have felt this way without having done this project. I’m so glad that we decided to do 3d because if we did 2d I would have made significantly less progress in my artistic vision and skill. We started the project around the time that Arcane season 2 came out, so me, Connor, and Goda were all passionate about creating something with a similar art style as in my opinion it’s the best looking piece of media which utilises the 3d medium. I decided to be the lead character creator in this project because I wanted to push my skills and it sounded fun to do. At the start I was regretting it because it was the probably the hardest job but in the end I don’t regret it because I learnt a lot of things. I think we could have made a better and more solid plan for this project as everything was quite spontaneous at points and random stuff was being made. Me personally, I actually really like that workflow of creating things that come to mind and just going along with everything but I think the final project ended up having a lack of direction and was just random scenes placed in together. That's not entirely true because we had a plan, I just think the plan suffered from being really bad and we could have focused on a more coherent project. Luckily, we chose a trailer format for our creation so smashing random scenes together isn’t inherently a bad thing. I saw the other group having a better sense of direction and cinema in their project and I think that really is what our final piece was missing. I still think our final project is an effective trailer for a hypothetical game. Obviously it's not perfect and I can point out so many flaws in every scene but at the end of the day, who cares. Everyone is happy with what we made and nobody has laughed at our work and said it sucks so I don't have anything to worry about. This project taught me that if you aren’t an experienced artist you shouldn’t create selfish art as nobody will see your vision. Something I am trying to work on is creating more digestible and mass appealing art works for now until I have advanced my skill level. I talked about this last project but with this one here I really think I improved on the front of creating something more mass appealing and digestible.
At some points of the project tensions started to arise in our group and friction was slowly tethering away through the flesh of our drive but it's what kept us all motivated. Passion, no matter how much we got mad at each other or had misunderstandings and disagreements, we all had a passion for creating something special. We shared many fun memories such as setting the map on fire outside and being called in to questioning, people farting, and the accomplishment of creating a good looking scene. I felt the lowest of lows and highest of highs whilst creating this. The end result was quite humbling for me too see that everything we did didn’t look exactly how I thought it would, (to my fault not others, or maybe I'm being too critical of myself) I began to see the beauty in the errors and imperfections the final piece had to offer and I think it adds to the charm and their our memories in every scene.
To end everything, I want to reiterate about how grateful I am to have such passionate and good friends to be my partners on this project. We achieved so much together, we even created an entire movie! I learnt so many valuable new skills and honed my craft on things that needed to be worked on so I can’t say I regret anything. I put 100 percent effort into every single day we were working so I have no regrets about anything. In conclusion this was an emotional roller-coaster of highs and lows but I know I will only remember the fun parts. I want to say thank you to the college for giving me an opportunity to even do something like this it truly makes me feel like I'm living even if its not that deep. Thank you... again.... everyone and everything.