It's safe to say that this post will probably be extremely long. Brace yourselves. The rant is coming.

I'm not actually sure where to start. I absolutely hated this project. I've found that over 3 months of doing exactly the same thing isn't for me - which I guess means I'll definitely be better off in a smaller studio! We had a strong idea that wasn't executed well, which made me miserable. In essence, the last term was spent being super miserable. But, that's life I guess. You'll get stuff thrown at you that you don't really want to do, but you've gotta man up and get on with it anyway.

Throughout the course of this project, working within a team of 6, we were required to make a functioning game level based upon Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The three topics we could choose from were: Oxford, gardens or underground. As a group, we decided to go with the underground theme as this appealed to all of us and seemed like some interesting work could be produced from it. 

A week or so before the project started, we all had to fill in a sheet and specify the roles we felt most comfortable in. This was to ensure there was an even split of people within teams. However, in our group, we ended up with 3 character artists and 3 environment artists but we worked around it and all chipped in on other areas - such an engine work. 
As we had 3 character artists within the group, we had to decide quite early on who was going to be modelling who. I was given the White Rabbit to model which I was both excited and nervous about as I’ve not modelled anything non-humanoid before.
However, as I managed to get him finished much sooner than what I'd initially planned, I took on a few extra assets and roles in order to lighten the load on my other team members. We needed a lot of assets to populate the level as it's so large, so I made a variety of picture frames, candles, lanterns, pocket watches etc. I was also in charge of modelling the skirting board, wooden panelling on the walls and the coving.

In addition to the character and extra assets, I also contributed to other areas of the project, for example:

• Concepts: Moodboards for the characters, style guide, book, warped assets & rabbit clothing. Concepts for the rabbit, final door and a storyboard.
• 3D Models: White Rabbit (Modelling, unwrapping, texturing, rigging, skinning and animation in Max & UE4.) 4 picture frame variations, candles, lantern, pocket watch, skirting board, wooden panelling (thick & thin variants), wrought iron door and the chest.
• Sculpts: 3 beam variations, candles, 3 frame variations.
• Unwraps: Steps, columns, lobby decor, stair supports, railings, ceiling supports, raised platforms, beams, chest and both sets of moveable stairs.
• Light Maps: Chest, 6 bookcase variations, camera, ceiling light, chandelier, desk, fireplace, cutlery, key, pen, plates, rose, wall light, furniture, desk lamp, rose vase, book, chest, final door and both sets of moveable stairs.
• Textures: Clean tile set, dirty tile set (for vertex painting in engine), 4 light masks, flip book texture for the candle flame, rabbits fur, rabbits body, pocket watch and normals for all of the frames.
• UE4 Materials: Rabbits body, rabbits fur, rabbits clothing, gold, glass, pocket watch, candle flame, subsurface for candle, frames, beams, desk, frosted glass, Alice's clothing, Alice's hair (subsurface), Alice's skin (subsurface) and the chest.

I also helped out with the population and lighting within the study area of the level and the population of puzzle area 3. The general level itself was populated by everyone in the group. 

Mystical floating candles..woops

I felt far too stressed out for the whole of this project, I'm not really sure why, but this was definitely the cause of my 'lack of enjoyment'. We just seemed to have one issue after another, which led to James and I staying up until 3am towards the end of the last week fixing things that should've been done weeks ago. For example, our playable character is Alice. Guess when she was put into engine. Yep, Thursday evening. A few working hours before the deadline. James had been asking for the assets for weeks, but it just didn't happen. However, I managed to get her working correctly with the default UE4 animations and replaced the blue dude in the third person blueprint. It was actually quite fun retargeting bones.

Whilst working on this project, we often had people telling us that it was looking really cool - but it was such a huge level. We found out that one of the judges is big on architectural accuracy and luckily for us, we had Jack helping us. He helped James out a lot with the overall structure of the lobby - especially the stairs and surrounding supports. The lobby is definitely the best looking area in the game, it still needs a lot of work, but we're developing an action plan of what needs to be done over the next 6 weeks to make it look fabulous. As well as receiving feedback from Jack, we also had weekly meetings with Steve and Chris to ensure we were on track.

Overall, I'd say our communication (or lack of it) let us down. Communication is such a vital thing in a project as big as this, and although we had a lot of it, it obviously wasn't enough. A lot of the time, it was unclear what people were working on throughout the day and the asset list I created on Google Drive wasn't being updated by certain members so we were unsure what stage people were at. This was a pain when people weren't in labs, or working on different floors etc. We worked around this though, and tried to play it to our advantages. Regular team meetings were - and still are - essential.


After receiving feedback around two weeks or so before the deadline, we realised that we really needed to cut down our level. What we had was underpopulated and it was suggested to us by our lecturers that we cut out the less important areas, and focus on making the remaining ones look really polished. This was something we'd been discussing for a while, but it always helps to get definitive feedback from others. After receiving this feedback, we decided to cut the following areas:

• Initial study area - being cut down into just the desk.
• Room in which you fall into from the rabbit hole.
• Corridor following said room.
• Puzzle area one is being cut down into one room instead of two. 

Looking back, I'm glad we had to cut these areas. At its current state, our level isn't completely polished. I dread to think what it'd look like if we hadn't cut it down...

If we were to start this project again, I'd definitely make a strict time plan and make sure we had a definite team leader in place. Our main issues seemed to be time management and communication which ultimately led to our project being a little more unfinished than what we wanted. I feel that if we followed our time plan more closely, and had daily team meetings, we could've reached all of the goals we set out to do. The three-ish random team meetings we seemed to have each week didn't seem to suffice.

Overall, I feel this project could have gone slightly better. We were way too ambitious with what we wanted to achieve and didn’t organise our time as well as we should have. I’m happy with the final outcome, but there’s so much more that could’ve been done. In a way, I feel disappointed. We all worked well as a team, but there was no real team leader to ensure that things were being done by certain dates – we were all relying on each other to have stuff done by agreed dates, which often worked but most of the time, it wasn’t as successful.

I’m happy with how I managed my own time though. I managed to get the rabbit finished (textured, rigged & animated) before the Easter holidays. I allowed myself time to improve on the rig and refine the animations after he’d been tested out in engine which meant I wasn’t panicking about not having him in the final level a few days before the hand-in. This also meant I had extra time to help people out with their work. For example, I spent the majority of the last two weeks doing the light maps and collisions as they hadn’t been done along the way.

I also spent the last part of the week fixing up silly mistakes. Files had been named wrong which led to confusion when importing, the scale of certain objects were all over the shop and pivots were in the totally wrong place. These were easy fixes though, and I'd rather they were fixed than left to cause more issues.

Ideally, I would’ve liked to have spent the last week polishing up my own assets and maybe making a few more to help populate the level but fixing up the assets we already have is obviously much more important.

However looking back, I’d say this is definitely the one project I’ve learnt the most on. Not only artistically and technically, but I’ve also learnt more about myself too. I’ve achieved what I wanted to and even did a bit on the side too, but even though I produced a main character for the level, I don’t feel as if I’ve done a horrific amount. The majority of my time has been spent fixing things for other people, which sadly, has meant some of my own work is slightly lacking. I've still learnt from these fixes though, which I'm extremely grateful for. It's nice knowing you've helped someone in your team out too. Yay.

In order to reach the deadline set for Off The Map, we'll need to put the stricter time plan into action. I went into the labs on Tuesday to figure out what extra assets need modelling and when it all needs to be done by. We've worked out that including this week, we've got 6 left. Which may sound like a lot of time, but if you include the fact that the labs are closed for the final week, it's not long at all. Welp. I've made myself a personal time plan so I can get all of these assets modelled within a week so I can get onto sculpting pretty things and Tom has also been super awesome and made one for the group. It's a week by week one and gives us a nice idea of what level we need to be at each day.

• Week 1 - Planning/organisation, bug fixes with models/textures and concepts/paintovers.
• Week 2 - Modelling of assets and concepts/paintovers.
• Week 3 - Sculpting/Texturing/Baking and fun engine things.
• Week 4 - Review of population and 'is it playable?'
• Week 5 - Finalising/polishing and OTM required documentation.
• Week 6 - Final polishing pass and packaging of the level.

The majority of the team has been in the labs this week anyway, and we've managed to get our level looking more finished! Well, here's to the end of second year. It's been a good one.

Off The Map: Post Mortem

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Off The Map: Post Mortem

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For this project, I was required to design two characters that were total opposites of one another. I got to choose what my tri and texture budgets were – providing they were sensible. The only other major requirement was that the characters had to look as if they were from the same world.

Now, normally Pinterest provides me with a huge amount of inspiration however, for some reason, I really struggled to gain any whatsoever. I’m not sure if it was the thought of having to design two characters that spun me off course or the fact I had to have the majority of my concepts and the final idea done within 3 days. I initially thought about doing a kind of cowgirl/something duo but after going home one weekend and finding an old history book, I decided to delve further into researching women during the Second World War. This led me to the idea of a WAC Colonel and a young evacuee. After doing a massive moodboard full of random ideas, the finalisation of my idea meant I could produce a more specific one.

On the first Thursday of the project, I had to present my work so far to the critical studies team in order to receive feedback and inform them of how I’m getting on so far. This went better than I thought it would and I received some really helpful feedback - which did mean I had to change my idea slightly, but definitely for the better. Mike said that he wasn’t too sure what the relationship between the two characters was and that it was something I really needed to push in order to successfully convey my idea. It was also suggested that I look at WW2 propaganda posters and how they’ve inspired films such as The Incredibles.

After speaking to Jack about my idea, he suggested I read a book called ‘Put Out More Flags’ by Evelyn Waugh as he felt it’d aid me in my research. This actually really helped me with developing the relationship between my two characters more. Books are awesome.

I've spoken about modelling in previous posts, so onto the unwrapping...or more commonly known as the part where I broke down and did the most stupid thing ever. I was trying to work out where would be the best places to put seams on the face and for some reason, my brain thought “smack one down and across the middle of the forehead!” I definitely wasn’t thinking of the consequences at the time to say the least. I normally make my normals first to get some similar details in the albedo, but this time around, I did the albedo first so I didn’t notice the horrific seams right until the last minute. I applied them in 3DS Max, and this happened.

So not cool. Luckily, it only shows up in the viewport and it’s totally invisible in UE4 and Marmoset so I’m trying not to kick myself too much over it.

Now, the brief says that we only have to model one of the characters, but for a stretch goal we’re allowed to make the second character, or rig the one we’ve already modelled. I knew from the start that I probably wasn’t going to have enough time to model both, who needs optimism? So I planned my time accordingly and left a day towards the end for rigging purposes.

Luckily, I’d had some practice throughout the summer project which did really help me out but the hands are another story altogether. Instead of rigging every single joint etc, I decided I was just going to rig her into a pose. So, going about the usual business, I started moving the biped around into suitable positions and everything was actually going really well! Right up until the hands. I knew the success wouldn’t last.

Fingers are 100% the most VILE things to rig. Luckily, Steve came to the rescue and advised me on where to place more edge loops to prevent seriously shoddy deformation! It was like being back in first year again drawing loops all over my hands.

As you can see, the briefcase also wasn't too happy. 

Overall, this project has been an absolute blast/nightmare for me! On one hand, I enjoyed trying out a new style and working in a different way but on the other, I'm definitely not planning on making a stylised character any time soon. I decided to create my character in this style as I thought it would be easier to manage with the set timescale, however looking back, it would've been 1000 times easier to stick to what I know and produce a realistic character. I can happily say I left the dreaded comfort zone over the past few weeks, but I feel if I'd have stayed there I probably could've produced something I was much happier with.
If I were to change anything, I'd definitely spend more time focusing on making my idea stronger and possibly allowing myself enough time to create the same character in a different style. I feel that's what's bugging me the most, not how strong the idea is, but the actual style itself. Ugh.

I'm staying in Leicester until the 23rd so I'm planning on doing a couple of paintovers and improvements on the textures and rigging to make me feel slightly happier about the whole thing!

Week 11: A Dichotomous Post Mortem

15:12

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Week 11: A Dichotomous Post Mortem

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