Going Forward

·         Now that all my work for this first year is done – I need to look to the future.

·         I personally struggle if I have no projects on the go, whether they be in games or in making art for games, so I will be approaching a few projects over the summer.

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What have I learnt:

·         This year has been a steep learning curve in so many areas; I have had to tackle everything from project management to final details of projects, so balancing what resources I have every day has been hard.

·         The way I began looking at every day is that I would tackle a type of project, be it concepting or modelling on all my projects at a time. I also started to be less harsh on myself – I kept an eye on deadlines using a Trello board, but I began to accept that I am learning, and that learning takes the time it needs and should not be rushed. I noticed when I began rushing out new content, I immediately forgot it and had to return to tutorials multiple times.

·         I hope next year I will be faster through spending time continually learning over the summer, since I plan on keeping a steady project schedule for the months I am off from uni work. The acquisition of artstation by Epic is especially exciting since now so much learning content is free to use – so I will be making use of that as well as YouTube tutorials and professional people’s blogs.

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Personal Projects over the summer:

·         I have had an idea in my head inspired primarily by seeing other student’s shader museums in third year, as they used that time as prep for their final major projects. It is incredibly ambitious, and I am aware that I will probably have to budget my expectations, however I think it is best not to dampen my spirits with negativity when I have not even started the project yet, and hopefully it can be a project that continually evolves as I try to improve my technical art skills.

·         If it has not been specified before, my aims are to focus on technical art and environment art. Characters, while I think they are important for me to know the workflows of and to have a basic experience in, are not what sustains my inspiration; I am massively intrigued by particle systems, water shaders, post processing effects and interesting procedural materials, with an interest also in foliage and environmental composition. So, to explore all my favourite things in one portfolio piece, I am going to attempt to construct a shader house.

·         The idea of the house is that each room would be inspired by the art of another game or piece of media in the hopes that I can learn the basic features of successful and impressive art styles. Below is a basic floor plan (open to change later) of what I want the house to be, and I would only be developing the interior at this time.

·         The text on the floor plan is quite small, so I will list all the rooms and their inspirations below:

First Floor:

o    Livingroom – Howl’s Moving Castle

§  Snow globe – This (if I could pull it off) would house my personal project I made over the Christmas break.

§  Aquarium under the stairs – Subnautica (specifically the lost river for its emissive effect)

o    Garage - Borderlands

o    Kitchen - Hades

o    Dining Room – Final Fantasy 7: Remake

Second Floor

o    Study – The Witness (With interactable puzzle and shutters system)

o    Bathroom – Sea of thieves (mini sea scape in the bathtub)

o    Bedroom 1 – Based off my steam profile background which is an animated background of a beautiful bedroom.

o    Bedroom 2 – Overwatch, Sombra’s Bedroom (based off this artstation concept art https://www.artstation.com/artwork/z92E6)

Loft

o    This would be a room based off the Painter in the loft in Dark Souls 3: The Ringed City DLC, mixed with the workshop from Bloodborne.

Floor Planning

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My Perspective regarding 3D:

·         This year has all but confirmed my love for 3D. I think this is because I am a lazy perfectionist, and the aspects like working out perspective in digital or traditional are quite tedious to me. I had some 3D experience before, but it did not let me truly explore how powerful 3D tools for everything from sculpting to texturing can be in making beautiful things.

·         I am still very certain that this is what I want to do; I need to be careful to manage burnout however, since I can imagine I might feel differently when I have worked on the same project for 3 months. I hope the differences of all the rooms will make it a lot easier on my attention span.

·         I need to get a better grasp on blogging, so I think I will try and keep my blog updated on the progress I make room to room on this project. I think I will try blogging the steps of each room however there may be jumps as I take time away from the project to relax. I have no budgets to consider, but I will try and keep it as low as possible to allow my computer to run all the different effects at the same time.