BA2b - Final Evaluation

In BA2b, even though it was a short term I feel like I have let myself improve and develop my skills in the areas I've been working in. For this game collaboration we ended up deciding to work in almost the same group again as it worked well last time, but we had Connor as the new 5th member. I think as a whole we have worked very well together and have made a game we should all be proud of. It was sometimes difficult trying to span out the work as you feel like you should be constantly working but sometimes you have to wait for someone else to finish their work or you have to give other people work that you wanted to do to make it fair. Another area that was difficult was that Kris, our main blueprint person had to essentially make almost all of the blueprints for the game because there is no easy way to share game files in order to share that workload, other than making separate files and working from them. I had to have the entire game sent to me in order to decorate each room because sharing isn't an option. I hope that at some point there will be an easier way to share the workload in that department, but for now we have to work in a more tedious way and have some people have a huge amount of work. It was a fun challenge to have all the artists keep up the same low res pixel art style that we had in mind, similar to doom. Occasionally a challenge as people didn't listen/know but in the end we have a very consistent looking game and I'm very proud. Mixing 2D and 3D was really fun and its something I wanted to try for a while so I'm glad I got the opportunity to work in that style. This collaboration also allowed me to work on my time management without too much pressure. I feel like my pixel art skills improved a lot in this project due to creating a lot of work, especially when its needed quickly so I have to rush. Pixel Art/2D stuff is what I think I want to create in the future for games etc, so I want to be able to get really good at it and get myself good jobs in the future. I sometimes felt like I didn't have quite enough to do in this project due to having to leave a lot of it to Kris and the rest of us mostly being artists, and I also wanted to improve on my blueprinting but never really got the chance as I felt I would be more of a burden then a help if I tried in a group project. I think over summer I will try to make some small games in Unreal or try some other game engines and see what I can create. In the end I am proud of our game and what we achieved in the weeks we had, and I feel like we worked very well as a team despite small hiccups along the road.

We also had the cross-course collaboration week with the interchange in there during this term. For me I found this to be a stressful week, and didn't at first particularly feel like doing the collaboration especially as the interchange was that week too and it was only the second week in our term after being told our brief, but at the end of the week I felt a lot better about it and I had fun filming it. We learnt a lot about the Fine Art students and it was a nice small project, though the timing could have been better. The interchange was also fun, though the team I was in had an issue with the device we were using so we didn't get as much out of it as I had hoped we would, and I feel like the explanation of the software was a bit quick for me and I tend to panic when this happens. It was fun and I enjoyed it and learnt a lot from it.

Overall even though it was a small term it was jam packed and I learnt a lot throughout the weeks. The project work was a nice way to end the year, though I would have preferred having a bit more to the year as it seems to end very quickly.

BA2b - Personal Work

This is some of the personal work I've one over the whole of BA2b that I feel is worth posting.

When I don't feel up to drawing something I try to get some anatomy, animal or face sketches done, which gets me drawing and helps with my people drawing practice.

I also like to do fan art in my spare time because often I improve the most in my art when I'm drawing characters I love, and I don't have to put too much thought into the character itself sometimes.

I also enjoy creating original characters, and recently i was trying to pick up a centaur girl idea, these drawings were posted in the order that i drew them so you can see my thought process behind the character.

I also had the idea for a game which would heavily involve mounts/pets, and drew up a very simple design idea for it

BA2b - Update + More Screenshots

These are the most up to date Trello Board Screenshots after we declared our game finished today. We had George play the game and he gave some good advice, which we then proceeded to correct and call it finished.

Below are screenshots of the built game.

Start Screen

Controls

Main room you start the game in

Human room, with the skull that Kris added a rotation to

Skeleton before playing the minigame, with saw sprite needed to play 

Minigame with my blood animation

Skeleton after minigame, hand lost a finger, finger on the UI on the left

Egyptian Room, no real mini-game due to constrained time limits

You have to talk to Rami Malik to get the key

Space room, with the center piece of the planets spinning ominously

Mini-game, parody of the original Space Invaders

Dinosaur room. The head sprite from the dinosaur sprite I made appears in this room to signify that you have to collect 5 bones

 T-Rex with missing bones

The mini-game is a dinosaur (or at least, a man in a costume) running out and chasing you, forcing you to quickly grab all the bones to finish the skeleton

Finished T-Rex, with all 4 keys in the UI shown

End screen.

BA2b - Week 6 Summary

This week, I was put on the task of decorating two more rooms - the dinosaur room and the space room. We are also trying to get our game finished for early next week, which I think is very achievable for us all. I drew some more pixel sprites for the dinosaur room, and also made some posters for above the doors for each exhibit room. I finished the ankylosaurus and drew another dinosaur, the plesiosaur. I am not so proud of the plesiosaur and I found it more difficult to shade with pixels, but in general it went quite well.

I also drew some more sprites for the exhibits. Some dinosaur teeth, a dinosaur egg fetus, and a long dinosaur poop. I think these went well, though I felt like I was rushing them a bit as I was at the time also trying to decorate the dinosaur room so I wanted them done quickly to put into the game.

Some references I used to help me with these:

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Below are the four signs over the doors in the main room.

Below is the space room, the room I am most proud of as there was a very good amount of 2D and 3D work to put in. Alex and Connor did a lot of good 3D work for this room and I was happy to make it well displayed.

Below is the dinosaur room, though not entirely finished as Kris is going to be adding elements like the dinosaur minigame and the sprites for that.

For the dinosaur mini game Giulia had made some pick-up bones, so I made the original T-Rex skeleton from which they have come from seen below.

Also it without the bones so that its clear that it is missing some.