Action Plan

Objectives	Tasks	Time Frame
Write essay	Figure out what im going to write about        Plan the essay        2500 words        6+ references        Review and polish	3-4 weeks (hand in 24th April)
Re-do dichotomy character project	Concept new idea        Re model “hippope”        Unwrap       Texture       Polish       Re do textures for gorilla	3-4 weeks (hand in 24th April)
Finish Off the Map project	Get all assets into level       Get all characters working       Review and polish       Off the map post mortem	5-6 weeks (hand in 8th May) Post mortem (15th May)
Presentation	Find and interesting topic       Plan presentation       Time presentation        Make it interesting and   relevant        Practice	Presentation (16th-17th April)
Make project more fun and interesting	Do side projects that interest me        Do personal work that is based around current project        Fun, wacky and whimsical	From now

Here is my action plan for the next few weeks and months. I came up with this after my review with Mike Powell as we talked about my progress and how I can make less enjoyable projects more fun. To figure what I could do to make mundane projects and work more fun and suited to me we talked about my most favourite project; the Sentry Gun.

This was by far the best project I've done probably since I've started Game Art. I enjoyed it because we had lots of leeway and could do pretty much whatever we wanted, I also chose something really fun and silly which made it really fun! After thinking about that Mike suggested I do some personal projects of my own that I make for fun.
He also suggested that I do some personal work alongside the current project, for example with the Off the Map competition I could make something that I find fun and interesting but still ties into the project. I do plan to do this once all the work I need to do is finished which will only be about a month from now. I'm excited to get to work on this as just thinking about it brings my passion for game art back as the course has slowly drained it recently. 

Now I have to plan that presentation and get working on the essay before I run out of time and fail at planning my time effectively like I usually do.

Long Post Is Long (sorry)

This is the last week before Easter break and man am I thankful. We’ve all been working really hard on the Off the Map project and when I say that I don’t only mean my group but every other group on the course, everyone really does try their best and it actually kinda inspires me to work harder as well.

For my group this week has been all about getting all the built assets into the level so it finally doesn’t just look like a whitebox anymore. I actually think we’re getting there. Sections of the level are almost complete and it’s filling out nicely.
I’ve built, unwrapped and finished texturing all my assets and I think they’re in the level at the current moment. After the Easter break I think it’ll be good to get everyone around the level and each tweak the sections we’ve concepted so we stick as close to the concepts as possible.

So there you have it. We’re definitely on the right track and after Easter we still have a decent amount of time for tweaking models, textures and fixing any errors that occur.

As for Easter break; I’m spending the first few days of it in Wales with my girlfriend which will be a well needed break from work and stress. The rest of Easter I’ll spend working on the essay for critical studies and also re-doing one of my projects, which I will explain in a moment.

We finally had a review from the tutors this week and its been much needed. For awhile now I’ve been feeling quite lost in terms of the course and how I feel about it not to mention picking a career. Theres no easy or simple way to put it other than the course has been effecting my mental health but I’m definitely on top of it at this point. After years of working at it I have found ways on coping with stress (which I get a lot of on this course) and I can manage.

However I had my review on the Monday of this week with Mike Powell which I’m happy with. It went fairly well, I’m into 3rd year which is always good and I’m on course to get a 2:1. Mike read me through how I’ve done over the year looking at the Dichotomy Character project and the Container City project. I didn’t do too well in Container City which was expected because I found that project pretty hard and stressful, on the other hand my character project went really well and overall I’m in the high 50s low 60s boundary. I’m kinda pissed that the Sentry Gun project wasn’t marked because not only was that my favourite project and by my opinion my best work, it was fun.

I had discussed my work with Mike and he said I didn’t need to re-do any work but I could if I wanted to gain a few marks and boost up my grade a little. So I chose to work on my character project a little more as I wasn’t totally happy with the final outcome. The gorilla character was the strongest of the two and I plan on only adjusting the textures as Mike suggested, but the hippo had fallen behind and so I chose to re model the entire character and really get it up to the standard of my other character. I also decided to go back to my original idea of a scientist gorilla and a pope hippo or “Hippope” as it has been called.

That’s this week in a nutshell, sorry its been a lengthy post. My next post will be an action plan and some more insight into what I’ve learnt from my review and how I’ll act upon it.

Stress and Textures: The Best Things in Life

This week I’ve been texturing, oh joy. Saying that it hasn’t actually been too bad. As our textures are basically block colour and just colour picked from our style guide and colour palette it isn’t as time consuming as it usually is.
I’ve been keeping to my personal time plan and I’ve managed to finish texturing by the end of the week which was my plan, so I’m pretty proud of myself for that.

Here are some of my texture sheets to show you how we are actually texturing. As you can see it’s mainly block colour. On a few of the rabbit hole assets with furniture I’ve added some more detail as it wasn’t coming across well just as block colour. 

For the furniture assets above I've added a bit more detail to show the grain of the wood as block colour wasn't working that well. Below are the main foliage assets which generally populate some of my outdoor areas. Its fairly simple but effective. 

As I’ve been making my texture sheets I’ve been checking how they look in Unreal so I have a vague idea of what it will look like in the final game level, other than added mood lighting which shouldn’t affect the model too much. As I’ve been checking in engine I can see where the textures need to be adjusted as I found some of the colours I used on the gateway looked odd in Unreal so I edited it and made it look more appealing in engine.

I’ve only managed to check a few assets in Unreal so far but I plan to review all the assets I’ve made and make adjustments if necessary. This is not only for my own piece of mind but it makes it easier for the engine artists as they won’t have to put all the assets in and check for me and ask me to change things.

Here are some of the assets I’ve been checking in Unreal so far. I’m quite pleased with how these look so far however I may still make some adjustments.

I'm happy that I got the textures finished this week as it means I'm working to my time plan.

But recently I’ve been finding working on this project hard as it’s difficult to be motivated on something you don’t really want to do. However I’ve been plodding along working on my assigned areas and the assets to populate it so I think I’m doing alright. 

Today we also had a lecture on the essay we have to write which counts for 30% of our critical studies grade. The essay is a reflection on the career we want and on the year so far. The word count is 2500 words which I think is acceptable and manageable. I'm not too worried about the essay as I did a lot of essay writing for A Levels and did pretty well. The only thing worrying me is the time we have to write it, 3 weeks during Easter is basically all we have. This is kind of problematic as we're still working on the Off the Map project and it takes up a lot of time and effort so I will have to manage my time more effectively and make time to sit down and write this essay. 

Off The Map: Unwrapping

After a hectic weekend I’m a bit behind on work however I have modelled everything I need to for now. This week I spent most of my time unwrapping all my models which I managed to finish by Friday.
Here are some of my unwraps, some of them aren't very efficient but I think as we don’t have very detailed textures it’s not too much of an issue but we’ll have to see how it effects the engine. 

Here are just two of my unwraps, these two are some of the more condensed texture sheets and are more tightly packed. The top unwrap is the main foliage uvw and the second is the rabbit hole assets like general furniture and items that are described in the book. 

As I had finished all my unwrapping I was tasked to make the clock for my puzzle room in the level. This was technically on my list of assets anyways so it wasn't too much of a task to do, I think I just forgot to do it earlier on and I'd been reminded. The clock is just a general clock face that is part of the puzzle, thankfully all the mechanics have sorted and it works really well I just need to swap out the placeholder for the actual clock face I've modelled. 

I kept the clock fairly simple as the style is very simple and faceted. The first image is the main idea I had for the clock and the second is a more refined iteration with a hand as well. I think it may still need some more iterations as maybe it's a bit too simple. 

Next week I plan to have all the textures for models completed. As the textures are going to be block colour the texture budget is fairly low, for example I plan to make all my texture sheets 512x512.

My opinion on this project so far is that it's fairly good. I'm quite stressed with the work and I can't say I'm enjoying it however I think if my group all keep the work up and carry on as we are we'll have a nice, cute game level at the end of the project. 

We're Slowly Getting There

This week I’ve been carrying on with modelling my assets. I’m making good progress as I’ve almost got all my assets modelled.
I’m planning on modelling everything on my assets list then making assets that are more for detail and there to make the level look nice. Some of the smaller assets are there to reference the story tying to the level to the book even more, these act as only subtle references.

I managed to get pretty much all the modelling finished by the end of the week. I wanted to start texturing on the Monday however I only finished the modelling Friday, so I have set time next week to unwrap. I plan to be unwrapping for the first few days of the week so Monday and Tuesday at least. Thankfully I can have this extra time to unwrap as texturing will be a very easy task as we’re using block colour in our textures, there’s very little actual detail as it’s a very simple and faceted style.

Most of the models I have created are fairly large in their areas, however there are some smaller and more detailed assets which are yet to be finished.
One part of the level is the first area which includes “The Danby Gateway” in the background which is in the Oxford gardens. I modelled it from a reference image then played with the shape and style to make it more wacky and stylised. I had a number of iterations however I preferred it to look like the actual gateway but really faceted like our style. So this is the final outcome:

Another area that has some larger assets is the fountain area. Similarly to the gateway I used the actual fountain from the Oxford gardens as a reference to model this fountain. I kept it fairly simple and low poly so it would fit into our style. I made some other assets including a park bench and an outdoor vase of flowers which will be repeated around the fountain for decoration. Each of these assets have been modelled from references from the actual Oxford gardens so they are accurate but I make them stylised to adhere to our style guide.

I’ve also made the bridge to go over the canal in the background which is very faceted and stylised, however its only there in the background as the payer cannot walk over it. The player has to actually jump on punts to cross the canal which I have modelled from real punts in Oxford.

One area that has mainly small and simple assets is the rabbit hole. The assets for this area are taken directly from the story so we have a cupboard, hanging maps and an empty orange marmalade jar, however the area needed populating so I also modelled a wardrobe, a grandfather clock and a chair. I did also concept a bookcase into that area however other areas have a bookcase so it’s more efficient to reuse that asset instead of making another.

Here is my updated asset list, as you can see I’m almost done, most of the stuff I have left to do is small details and trees.