DMUGA Week 16 - Always giving it my all

Just a brief introduction to explain why I chose the title I have. From the very start of this course I can honestly say 100% that all I give is my best. There's been many times I've thought about whether or not I'm cut out for this, and this is yet another one of those times. I'm sure there are other people that feel they're not good enough as well, but the lingering thought of "What else can I possibly do?" is just sitting there in the back of my mind. I look at others so I can see what I'm striving to beat/compete with, but I don't know what more I can do to try and get to that level; if I can't even compete then they're the ones going to be getting the job. I could go more in-depth but will keep this short. So just to summarise, I NEVER give up on anything and will keep going full steam - if I don't meet the standards required by the end of year 1, I may have to re-evaluate.

Visual Design

Moving onto a brighter note, it's now clear what we need to do for this 2 week project. It's extremely frustrating that any value of time that Chris recommends each piece should take, I end up doing double (as said in my previous post) and it's a massive problem which I just can't seem to help! The thing is, because I'm not as experienced as many others, I have to take extra time & preparation on everything we draw. This means that I end up spending so much time on the visual design work, I don't leave a lot of time left for game production. Obviously weekends are out of the question, each day timetabled off is just another day where I do my work. Also, a lot of people have said that the amount we've been given to do is too much, and it wouldn't be if we did only spend 1 hour drawing each final + 5mins per sketch, however, if this is what I did spend... I'd probably get shown the door.

One of the finals I did using the Indian Ink (More time spent than I should have)

Over the past few pieces that I've done this week, I have really tried to spend literally 10mins on the smaller sketches, and keep it under 2 hours for the finals. This does mean that the quality of work has suffered (noticeable in my most recent one), but not too much hopefully. I've had a lot of time now to play about with different shading techniques used with the indian ink & fineliner, I'm still experimenting and making mistakes (I.e. Putting too much on, too much water, bleeding becomes problematic), but I think I'm honing in on a style that I like and is quick to do.

Game Production

Into the 2nd week of our van project and I had planned to have finished the exterior & interior by now. I am close to that as of this moment, but having said that, I still have a fair amount to do for the interior. Although, considering I have around 700 tris left, everything will be very low poly so it may not take too long. The thing that worries me however is that despite having 4 weeks, our head of 3D has said that she built-in the time with this project alongside the 2 weeks of intensive study. Which essentially means we don't really have 4 weeks. I am proud to say that my topology/polyflow for this is actually rather good for a first-time vehicle, I just need to make sure that my texturing is up to par in order to bring it to life. I am extremely looking forward to the gladiator project we have next, it'll be a challenge but hopefully one I'll enjoy very much.

Van_001 - Iso front view

 As you can see from the pictures, everything seems to be pretty good, the only thing that maybe slightly off is the bend at the bumper coming round the front. Although, this isn't a major cause for concern, plus, I tried to make it so that when it comes to texturing, I'd have 100% accurate lines where the bumper starts/finishes, to prevent the bumper appearing too large or too small.

Van_001 - Iso back view

In addition, as I've just mentioned, we found out about what will be happening in the next 2 weeks. One week will be dedicated to visual design, one week to game production. They claim that it'll be a crash course for fundamentals that all of us should have learnt by now, but will go over to really let us absorb everything. I think this is a really good idea, but I will say that I'm pretty scared of the visual design - I'm just excited for 3D.

Critical Studies

The past 2 seminars have been rather interesting. They're trying to get us to see objects in the 3D poly mesh that we'd be modelling on 3ds Max. This is well us when it comes to creating them because if we think about how something is structured/how it's weighted, we add geometry to the areas where there needs to be structure (I.e. In an orderly fashion which logically would support the weight of that object). In the first week we were given a task to model a card manikin using the idea of very low poly. In our group, we met up and started to brainstorm a quick & easy net that we may use for the body and the head. However, we quickly realised that in order to make it accurately, it would take a lot of measuring out/getting angles right etc. So instead, we decided to do a very quick model in max, UV unwrap it and print out the net.

Modelling it in 3ds Max

The finished mankin

 I have to say that it worked out very well, a couple of problems cutting it out but otherwise, rather swift. The thing I liked about our model is that because of the net, we could get some sort of form to our limbs, whereas other models were very block-like and quite linear.

The think that I like about doing this is the sudden realisation that anything we model which is low poly like this, we can potentially print out the net and make it into a form we can touch without the use of a 3D printer. The next project we've been set is to texture it. We've been given little block-men to do for 'fun', but I'd really want to see if we can texture ours in Photoshop and print out the next again so we can apply it to the figure. I don't know if that'll happen, but it would be nice.

A good week despite the stress, and I am very much enjoying things. It's just the battle of keeping up to speed and not producing work which is unacceptable. The next 2 weeks may bring me to tears, or be extremely helpful and be just what I needed to keep me on the path to becoming a game artist.