This has been one of the best group projects....well best project non-stop really, that I have had the best experience from. I have never learnt so much in my life in a short span of time, I have never been more interested to want to learn more about something and see what I can do, more than anyother time in my life.
2 Big things that stand out for me doing this project...
Alot...I mean alot of time inside on the computer which means no or next to no exercise for the time working on project. which = a fat ass!
So this leads me to number 2 - even though I felt we had planned and re-planned and reviewed our time budget etc...we still ran out of time in the end...so Time in Animation is important in more ways than one.
I think its fair to say though...that the 3 of us each had varying levels of what we knew in Maya which set us back in a few ways that and we each had different ways of handling our time.
IN THE BEGINNING
Chris, Leon and I were so lucky to have fallen in this group as right from the first class we immediatly came up with an idea simply from me seeing some quirky image on the net that leon was scrolling through...and it just rolled on from there. The guys said I was able to visualise the concept more freely and therefore decided to go with it as I seemed so excited about Alien eggs and zombie farm animals. And from that very first meeting we decided we would meet every Monday for the next 6 weeks until the project was complete.
From the very 1st meeting we all agreed on our goal beginning to create a corny game concept - and how more cornier can you get than a bunch of farmers anihilating alien eggs and then capturing the zombie herds to turn back to good animals?! As I came up with my character the same day, we decided to go with her feel...a very rolly poly, eye candy, highly saturated world.
The guys then came up with a few character designs...these initial ones were all way too different to the one we had signed off on...and the second time round we decided to have a bit of diversity as there was too much time being spent on their designs. The idea was that if we coloured similarly then it wouldn't differentiate too much.
But otherwise Leon went nuts with all the concept design and we got some awesome starting points for all our assets and colour palette...their was alot of drawing and research done by Leon to get the designs started and all from that initial meeting where we were just mucking around and jokin haha!
Whos doin What?
We all wanted to design and model a character so we all did our own farmer. When it came to who would do the rest of the modelling, Chris let us know that he felt fairly comfortable with this and could get them done quickly...and that he did! But after a review we decided our barnyard and tractor wasn't quirky or cartoony enough and seemed a bit too realistic for our fantasy world...so Chris went away and tweaked it a bit further and came up with some beatiful designs. I also felt comforable modelling and decided to do the remaining characters and level design bar Leons and chris's farmer of course. Half way through doing hte level though, Chris had finished his modelling and took over the environment modelling.
It was fairly obvious from the work of the concept designs by Leon that his strengths would probably be in the texturing...however it didn't really pan out that way. Leon had alot of dilemma with his character which set him back a few weeks in the group compared to where we were at...but managed to finish the pig fairly straight away which got our first arch nemisis on the stage! Leon also contributed to the promotional packaging of our game which is pretty cool!
So that left me and Chris to divy up the models and texture them.
I enjoyed working with Chris as somebody new! He was such a help and nothing was too much to ask of him. I know Ill be sitting at a computer one day working on some industry project and Ill always remember the number of things he taught me through this project. The most important one being that if you don't know it, find it out no matter what the lengths. Chris heard someone say they could use a 2D texture map but apply some sort of 3D file to it and it would like 3D at certain angles even though it was 2D...it took him about an hour or so...but he figured out how to do and even though we couldn't use that sort of texturing for our game, I will remember that time as one of the highlights through this project.
MY CONTRIBUTION
I Modelled and textured Bailey, Fudge and her weapon and the Alien Egg. I also textured the skydome and tree planes, hills and grass, Leon's pig and Chris' chicken. I am fairly happy with Bailey and her sickle and hills and grass...the rest though were sort of plonked on me at the last minute and I felt I had to rush them a bit. But all in all I think the overall look and feel of the scene is really fun and inviting.
IN CONCLUSION
- Lots of fun and lots learnt
- I enjoy working in group projects
- Maybe we had too many models to work with and therefore too much to texture...although if all of us shared the even amount of work I think it could have been possible
- SO possibly if we would have stuck to having some sort of director who was comfortable in stating what needed to be done etc...
- I regret running out of time to put the characters in a pose...
- I regret running out of time to finish the texturing properly on some assets...i hate a half finished job...but what can you do *shrugs*
- Overall I think our scene looks really catchy and fun...would be an interesting story line and fun environment to travel around in.
- My goals were achieved...I wanted to try something of everything and learn new things and i definately learnt my fair share of things!
Its all character builiding and a learning curve hopefully we'll take this across to the next project!
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