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.