Evaluation

EVALUATION

Since we worked very well together in our responsive brief, I thought this close group of me, Callum and Meg clearly work well together through good communication skills and trust, so we decided to collaborate again.

For me the most interesting and enjoyable aspect of this project was by far the start. I enjoyed coming up with story ideas and which direction this project could take, and I thought it was a good idea to try comedy as I had already attempted Film Noir, Western, Horror, Action and a drama throughout my film related education, so trying a different genre would challenge me in new ways and expand my learning.  We took this as a comedy western as we all were great fans of westerns, and the western of all projects before we felt was most fun and original.

I had a great degree of fun designing the Platypus Bill character, looking into similar characters and coming up with a design that could be taken both humourously and seriously in a different form of media.  I was very proud of my design as I feel he looks original, his colour pallet is fantastic and he is very memorable, with his strange nature and costume fitting the animal he is, which is common and normal in a foreign land.

Designing his environment was also great fun. Thinking about where he would live and about the game as a sandbox game and more explorable was great to imagine.  Also considering his size in relevance to for example barrel and creates would make his world seem much larger and help define his size. I even added a hammock on a tall tree, where he could live with his partner a possum (also Australian native animal), which is the purpose of the setting by the water (for him) and the tall trees (for her). These additions though not necessary make the environment seem more lived in and over all more believably inhabited.

I got in contact with a musician who worked on our Responsive brief who we liked the music off, and asked him to produce music based of Sergio Leone’s Spaghetti Westerns, mixed with the music of Red Dead Redemption.  The music he came back with we liked so much we decided to make the voice over more serious to suit it emphasising the lead characters incompetence.

The next part of the project was the part I despised the most. I knew I would not enjoy it from previous experience with Maya, and that my understanding of it was minimal but I felt perhaps this practice would improve my knowledge. I found many problems many times and even had to re-start the entire model Alien, I found this process I found very stressful. I followed the guides as closely as possible but always seemed to find a new problem. I eventually had to finish the character that couldn’t export to Unity for a still unknown reason, and complete the next stages with a new one. Though I have displayed every component necessary for this exercise and even shown some of them twice as I had to re-start, I was disappointed I had so much trouble with the programme as it ruined the project for me and feel if this element wasn’t a requirement I wouldn’t have done it and have enjoyed the brief far more.

I also had to work a lot with the Platypus character and finish this of the first model, which I had just as much trouble with even though I had completed an Alien before. I had applied my learning to make the process of the second Alien and Platypus much quicker but still found new issues to over-come. My knowledge of Maya has improved tenfold, and I know far more than I did at the start of the project but I still have no desire to touch the programme again, and now I know what can come of it if I wanted to use it in future I would collaborate with someone who enjoys using the programme as I can admit I am not talented with using it nor do I enjoy it, it is certainly one of my weaknesses. I do see the uses of Maya especially for a transmedia subject that could flow into film and game from a comic.  The final character and environment look fantastic and very much like my comic styled concept art, which I found hugely rewarding, and I know Maya was a necessity for this. I simply can identify my weakness and strengths, and though with time I could improve with the programme it isn’t where I want to concentrate career wise and feel my time would be better spent perfecting my skills in comics and film.

Despite my annoyance in creating the Alien I do see it’s a required component especially for when it comes to making the actual characters, as having done the texturing I was able to make what are in my opinion brilliant textures twice for the Platypus characters (as he too had to be re-modelled.).  I had animated the Alien without issue, so animating the film with the group became easier and quicker as I was confident in it and I didn’t come across a problem. This interactive machinma piece has also allowed more creative film making skills as camera angles that couldn’t usually be used can be in a game environments, such as shots that would either wise require a helicopter or crane being travelled to a very remote location.  Being able to create this digitally means being able to stay exactly faithful to the concept art and have characters that could not be filmed without the addition of photo-realistic CGI.  

To conclude I would say my biggest weakness for this project was time management, as I did do work on PPP which on reflection I shouldn’t have in the time span we had left. Also, during this module we had a week when we had four deadlines which meant for a period of time this module had to stopped being worked on. If I were to do it again I would leave more time for technical hiccups in the software as we have come across many which has delayed the project. I consider my achievements and strengths to be the design of the characters and the textures which I am very proud, and my ability to persevere through many difficult parts of the brief for which I did not enjoy and I had many issues with that often professionals couldn’t identify the problem with.