Brooke Steele
Task Three
To support the allocation of roles for our upcoming studio project, I will create a critical evaluation reflecting on my development over the past eight weeks. I will highlight my strengths, interests, and potential specialisms I might want to focus on.
I will summarise my engagement with specialist tools, materials, and processes explored during the project. I will critically assess my practical outcomes and identify the specialism I found most engaging, explaining why it stood out to me. I will also consider how effectively my work communicates creative intent, purpose, and visual language.
I will reflect on how my experimentation has improved my understanding of the games development pipeline and how this insight will shape my approach to future projects within my chosen specialism.I will document and publish all of my evaluations on my WIX portfolio to track my progress and share my reflections with others.
Personal Development
My main key strengths over the eight weeks have been creating and documenting art work and code in my website such as my 'Unreal Engine' page and my 2D sprite page. I have explained how and why I have done certain aspects to improve my work and show people how my thought process works in making my overall project. Things I wish to improve are my time management skills such as making sure certain tasks are done at certain times to be able to not fear about falling behind.
The thing I have enjoyed so far this term is the exploration of new topics such as learning about universities and courses, learning more 3D aspects, and writing about other games to analyse their pitfalls and pros. I enjoy this since I enjoy learning about new things and by learning about possible options for higher education helps me feel more comfortable with this career path as I now understand more options.
The most challenging aspect I have faced so far is time managament as the main things I struggle with are procrastination, multitasking, poor prioritization, and allowing distractions. I want to improve this by dedicating certain days of the week after school hours to certain tasks to not under and overdo work while creating a portfolio so I don't fall behind.
Engagement with Tools, Materials, and Processes
So far I have used the 3D programs: 'Blender', 'Unreal Engine', and 'NoteClip' for coding. I have used 'GameMaker' for level design. I have used 'Floorplan Editor', and for 2D art I have used 'Krita'. However, we have been told we will use new platforms such as 'Maya' in the future to explore new software.
I have applied these tool in my work to either improve my work with the knowledge I have in these programs such as knowing all of the special tools in 'Krita' such as the : filters, patterns, magic wan tools and all they vast and different brushes available. Using my own knowledge in these programs help me improve faster as I don't need to re learn basic things such as shortcuts ion new programs as I can jump straight into work since I know the basics.
My methods can be compared to people in the industry in their professional practices such as using colours to block out silhouette before sketching to make sure the overall body language is there. This practice is seen in many concept artist works as by mapping out the overall shape can help make a base line a character without needing to instantly go into details as once the shape is correct the artist can create the details freely without fear of being to cluttered on the character.
Assessment of Practical Outcomes
For the 2D specialism I have created artwork and animations for a platformer sprite giving them an idle, walking and jumping animation plus other key art for references. For level design I have create my own 3D maze level and a 2D level concept for a trampoline park. For 3D I have created renders of moving airplanes and a pumpkin to develop my 3D skills and I have used 'Unreal Engines' visual code to help create the maze game and make it playable.
I personally I have the the 2D artist specialism the most interesting as it appeals to me the most in my future education and or future career scope. While the other specialisms looked interesting and would be appropriate and appealing for other game design aspects (3D, programming and level design) I will want to explore different job role in the 2D sphere as I will following a job in games art.
I have effectively communicated my creative intent, purpose, and visual language throughout my WIX website, when starting a new task I first create an aesthetic page to document my work making it looking interesting and appealing to the eye, which can help make my portfolio stand out. Then I present what task I have been given by explain the end goal of the task and why it is needed for me to improve my skills, while completing the task I document progress photos and explain each step until I have the finished result. Finally, I talk about how I have finished to task, what I have learnt, what I can do to improve and how this can be use in future projects. By doing this I can show people I am very good a retelling and compiling my work to make it easier for and outsider to see my process and why I have done it and or how it made me improve my work.
Reflection and Future Planning
The experimentation I have done over the past 8 weeks have helped me understand more of the games industry and how each sector works in harmony with each over. An example being how without a basic concept of a level design 3D or 2D artist can make visuals for the game and programmer can't base the code around the 3D/2D art. With experimenting with new skills such as 'Unreal Engine' in visual coding I feel more comfortable starting 3D projects since I have document the process on how to create the basics in 'Unreal'.
My experience of 'Creative Practice: Games Development L3 Extended Diploma' will help me approach future projects differently due to what I have been learning. I now am able to come up with ideas easier and faster making the planning process for smaller task quicker since I can think of simple yet compelling concepts quicker of simple tasks instead of over thinking making a task worth 5% of my grade feel like a task worth 50%. By doing this I feel less stressed and more motivated to learn new things as they don't worry me so much in the long run.
The main skills in both mental and physical in game development is understanding better ways in maintaining time management and understanding animation better with new software to create more in depth artwork. I want to in the future for the rest of the projects and FMP to be able to set a deadline of when I want a task to be done and accomplish it in that dead line so I don't have or rush or worry about it last minute and be able to move onto new task easier as I can only focus on those tasks. For the physical skills I wish I could learn new software for animation to learn it better so I can use animation more in my works making them more interesting.