I’m writing this reflection on the final week of my project, making it my last (sounds pretty morbid).
My previous goals:
- Focus on completing section c of my learning outcomes: Subject Specific Intellectual and Research Skills:
- C1 select appropriate tools in order to support the development of a ‘Vertical Slice’. While I am using appropriate tools to create my artwork, exploring other tools, such as Procreate, will help me gain more experience and support the development process further.
- C4 analyse and produce your practical work through sustained engagement and critical awareness of your ideas. I need to keep on referring to my research and ideation process when creating my final artwork, making sure I don’t stray from my development process. I need to continuously reference my previous work when creating new work.
- Work on some of my weaknesses from last semester, to do this I will need to:
- Focus more on integrating research with the outcomes.
- Provide solid justification, and more user testing to determine final designs.
- Connecting the art with the narrative explicitly will help clarify the overall vision.
It seems like I set myself a lot of tasks! Was I able to achieve them:
- C1 – I was not able to experiment with Procreate, as by the time I got to the stage where I could realistically begin, I felt would have taken me too long to learn how to use it. I preferred that my artwork was good quality rather than testing a new tool with just three weeks of the project left, and not having much to show for it. However, I still hope I achieved the learning outcome.
- C4 – I did achieve this learning outcome, making sure to link my references, mood boards, research and previous development processes to my artwork! An example of this can be found here:
- Focus more on integrating research with the outcomes.- I feel like compared to my first semester I have definitely improved on this. I have conducted both secondary and primary research and used them to inform my decision making process. This can be seen in the development of the survivor camp background:
- Provide solid justification, and more user testing to determine final designs. – I definitely achieved this in semester 2, which can be seen in my survivor camp development, as well as my second playtest results:
- Connecting the art with the narrative explicitly will help clarify the overall vision. – I have felt like I’ve made a big improvement in this area for Those Left Behind. The dialogue scene backgrounds were based on narrative scripts and character interests, and the survivor camp itself tells the player the story of civilians left behind at a launch site.
Overall:
In the past few weeks I’ve had to learn to balance my time with my second module, work on group communication, and experience unexpected challenges. Despite the slight panic of the last few weeks when we realised just how many bugs our game had, I feel very relaxed right now! Which is much better than last semester when I managed to put myself in the hospital. So I guess the biggest lesson I’ve learnt this semester is how to effectively manage my time, and the importance of staying on top of my work. This meant any last minute surprises on the game development front felt less overwhelming, and easier to tackle (although pretty much all the credit on this definitely goes to our programmers). And I feel way more calm, so I’m hoping i’ll be smart enough to avoid putting myself in a stressful situation again, although those are famous last words.
I’m really pleased with what we were able to create this semester. When I was given this game to make with the role of environment artist, I was overjoyed. This was definitely one of my favourite game concepts and I was so excited to expand my skills on environment art and design.
I think my development skills have definitely improved a ton this project, and I have been wholeheartedly pleased with everything I was able to create (despite facing a momentary lapse in imposter syndrome). I believe I did well in my role of environment artist, and I hope my team feel the same. I am so pleased with all the effort everyone put into the game, It’s always really rewarding to work with people who are just as passionate about something as you. While the game may not have turned out exactly as we imagined it would, I am still happy to see all our hard work take a single form, and hopefully one day we can look back on it and see how far we’ve come since.
It does feel weird to be ending year two already as we only just came back from a long easter break. Truthfully it feels like we started the whole year two days ago, I don’t really feel ready to be a year 3 yet. At least the constant moving of time forces us to do things we might otherwise never achieve…. Like my summer project! I’m super excited to be organising a short summer project with my friends, to make a narrative focussed game about the increasing growth of hatred in the world, especially in our younger generation. I hope it will improve my skills for next year, and at least it will be something to add to my portfolio.
Thanks for reading my long ramble if you made it this far! And if any teachers read this, thanks for providing us with so much support this year, I really appreciate it <3
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