evaluation - Game Art Design Part 2

For my game art design project unfortunatly I have not completed the briefe to a reasonable standat and have not completed the animation side of the project, I struggled to adjust to the Maya software and found the softare very hard to use which was not due to lack of effort, I could'nt equip myself to using the software sucsessfully into completing the briefe before the scheduled hand in date.

I enjoyed the first bit of the brief inwhich was to come of with a chracter design, which is more in my comfort side, as I enjoyed coming up with a variety of different designs and enjoyed researching different characters for example Time Splitters which was a great place to start researching as they have some very unique and intersting concept designs.The idea of a robot came straight into my mind as it was first easier to come up with concept designs by using a variety of different shapes which I believed would be easier to construct onto maya. And secondly when coming into animating a robot walk I believed would be easier to animate due to the non human animation which I could proceed in. I liked the concept designs I came up with and took huge influence from the timesplitters comedy feel of its characters by adding a monkey into the back of the robot which would control the robot which I thought would be a unique and interesting idea to proceed in and thought I came up with really nice concept art to develop onto maya and bring it to life.

When it came to modeling, is really where I struggled, I just couldnt get the model to look like my concept at all. I could create the basic shapes such as the cube for the body, but when it came to modeling for exanple the foot into a shape that resembled the concept art I just could'nt get my head around it, and when I did create a reasonable shape it was just too many faces to use on something as small as the shoe, and this frustrated me deeply. I followed tutorials such as the modeling one posted on the brief to no result as I still struggled to grasp the basics. Eventually I took out a maya book to modelling which was actually very helpful, as it had a CD which you could follow but at the same time you had the book which you could draw reference to. Even with this It still took me a while before I came up with a modeled character which I was even slighly happy with and due for lack of time I decided to leave a little out such as the monkey and the jet pack behind as creating the shapes for these features continued to frustate me and so decidede to leave them out, resulting in my final modeled character looking a lot different to my concept however you can still tell the resemblance, I was really unhappy with this as I enjoyed coming up with the concept art and liked my idea, and hopefully if I can improve my maya skills I would like to go back.

After the modeling part of the brief came the texturing and UV mapping, similar to the modeling I just did'nt understand it, I had a go at it be reading through a variety of tutorials but they did'nt really help me and due to too much time spent of the modeling I decided to skip this part and try and have something animated to atleast show by the final hand in date but after I want to go back and try and learn more about Uv mapping in particular as its a very important part and something I need to improve my skills on.It was a shame cause I had a good idea for the texturing part such as having a camouflaged texture combined with a futuristic look to coincide with the Jungle which is my idea for the environment design which I have to put my character in.

After this I took my character into the rigging stage which thanks to some tutorials posted on the VLE, I got the grasp of and proceeded in them fairly quickly until I got to the skinning and Weight Painting part of the procedure where I noticed that my skeleton contrustion didnt work well such as having the elbow points in the wrong place and due to me rushing by this stage I failed to consider how my robot would be animatedtherefor when it came to skinning it went completly wrong and I started to try some weight painting but made no difference to my result. So I would have had to start the rigging all over again. So I decided to and in the project at this part as there was very little time to go back and rebuild the construction of the skeleton.

If I was to do this project again there I would definatly improve my timekeeping and keep to mini deadlines, which I originally started of and kept to well, but at times I missed deadlines due to having a parellel project on at the same time which interferred a little for example I agreed to help out on a video project and due to lack of booking times for the studio in which to do the filming it overlapped with one of the game art lessons which was unfortunate. apart from that theres not alot much more I'd change as I put the hours but I stuggled with the concept of Maya and spent many hours trying to improve my knowledge and skills by searching tutorials. I would also have gone to the library at an earlier date but thats something for future projects potentially to help me on software.

Overall I did not enjoy the brief,I liked coming up with the concept and drawing designs which is more the route I want to head down, but Ive realise in order to pass the course I have to complete all projects to the brief requirements, and even though im likely to be reffered, there is areas inwhich I have improved on, such as I beleieve I know a little more about Maya such as the steps required from modeling to Animating a walk cycle, and Belive I have improved my modeling skills to a better standate and I've realised I have to go back to maya at sometime and experiment more with and attempt to get more comfortable with the software,even though maya is not to my strength and an are I would proceed into the industry.