Candidate Authentication
I confirm that the attached assessment is all my own work and does not include any work completed by anyone other than myself and sources have been appropriately referenced.
Finlay Mander
PART 1:
After deciding on what I wanted to create I began by making mind maps based on the environment from Mad Max films. I started to look at screenshots from Mad Max Fury Road films. Whilst l was doing this I was taking notes and screenshots of the colours to eventually build up a bank of the colour schemes from the film and how the different environment sets were built up. After going into further detail I got a good understanding on how the film sets were created and the extra details they add, such as crates, ruined buildings, rubbish etc. The core of the Mad Max franchise is its is a post-apocalyptic action. I wanted to capture the post-apocalyptic theme in my work as building and texturing assets this way allow me to be creative and make my own version of an abandoned environment scene that could’ve been from the one of the films. I believe that the post apocalyptic themed desert was captured well in my work. Since by just watching the production video I created for the participants from the survey. They were able to link my work with other video games, which share similar themes. They linked it to western video game levels and games featured in an abandoned cities. During the planning stage I created a sketch to experiment with buildings becoming abandoned and overgrown. This was a useful exercise since it helped me vision how something can breakdown and become decrepit and gave me inspiration on adding details to a scene.
During the planning stage I was going over screenshots from the film and other pieces of artwork I found online and on DVD covers, I did this to decide upon a colour scheme and intended to stick to it as planned. I knew that it was important to do this since it would keep my work consistent and allow me to keep to my original theme of a post-apocalyptic desert. I quickly learned that this was the right choice to make since I would be creating my assets over a multiple days but keeping a colour scheme helped my work stay in unity with each other and made transferring it all into one scene a easy process. I suppose that if I hadn’t planned ahead I would’ve ended up losing out on a lot of time.
I also saw the benefit of doing sticking to a colour scheme in my feedback. In my survey I asked if “The colors in the environment work well together” and the response I got to this was overwhelmingly positive, having an appeasing environment is very important as the participants who dont have experience in modelling will notice bad, unlatching textures first over bad craftsmanship in 3D models. In hindsight I think that giving yourself a rule such as “I’m going to stick to this colour pallet” or “I only want to use natural colours”. Will help me keep my work at the best of its ability, making it look professional and stay organised.
My environment needed to be visually stunning, which is why before being allowed to start my survey I asked the participants to watch the video I had created. After the participants had viewed the video I asked them to rate the overall quality of the models out of five stars. On average this score came in at four and a half stars, I couldn’t of asked for much better really as its really important that the work was visually impressive. However, there is always room for improvement, hence why at the end of the survey I asked the participants to write any other comments they have on the visuals of the product. There were two notable comments that were similar to each other and constructive towards the outcome of my renders. One of the participants suggested that my renders have more lighting angles and shadowing. Another participant asked that I try and create more realistic shadows.
This kind of constructive criticism is why I learned that getting feedback is really key. Since its hard to be critical on yourself after spending so long on something getting different point of views can still find room for improvement. Now that I’ve been made aware of where I can improve.I’m going to work on making strides in my abilities with the lighting tools inside blender, since they have endless opportunities.
Once I had created my scene I ultimately wanted my work to be fit for purpose and to be at a standard where it could be used as promotional renders for an upcoming game on a digital marketplace. The reason why I wanted to focus advertising on a digital market place as they are becoming increasingly popular recently. In my survey I asked the participants if my work could be used for promoting a game on steam ( the most popular and successful digital marketplace for PC games and software) to which 100% of the participants selected ‘Yes’. Next I asked the same participants if they believed that they product would be fit for advertising purpose, again 100% of them selected ‘Yes.’
PART 2:
Learning Blender and getting confidence with it:
When I first began this project I had little not no experience with using Blender, previously I used Cinema4D for all of my 3D modelling and texturing so I was aware that making the change to blender would come with its difficulties. I overcame these challenges by applying myself in my free time to watch tutorials on YouTube and challenged myself by making smaller low poly models. For one of these challenges I created my a model of my desk and everything on it. Although these were quite simple tasks in the early stages it gave me the confidence to start planning what my first 3D asset was going to be.
Research and Planning:
After I had decided on what I was going to create I first compiled a group of reference images of barrels, this was going to help me with how to texture them and to what scale I had to make everything. After going through this extended planning period I realized that this was going to be the most efficient way to model, and for quite a few reasons; Finding multiple reference images allowed me to see how the texture of the barrel worked in the background and what didn’t, this is evident in some of my earlier work when I did my first render of the barrels on a mossy overgrown background instead of the brick wall 3D texture I ended up settling for. Another reason why doing ‘extra’ planning was important is because it allowed me to have a bank of resources to reference from, aiding me to keep on track and stay organised. Because I was going to be doing a lot of modelling and texturing a short time frame, being able to take a break and plan out what I’m doing next was a nice mental reset and allowed me to not burn out.
The use of Feedback via Anonymous Surveys:
Before taking on this task, I had never really seen the important in getting feedback from anyone but my tutors. However, since I posted my survey in a digital art feedback discord server its shown me that honest criticism from others can allow you to improve at a higher rate than just noticing your mistakes yourself. The survey was also useful for allowing credit to be-given where due and was a nice confidence booster.
As I mentioned previously in Task one, its easy to become blinded from your own mistakes when you spent so long working on something or you chose to ignore them. This is one of the advantages of having your work looked at from someone else’s point of view. Although the survey was mostly positive it didn’t mean that there wasn’t anything to take away from it. At the end of the survey when I left a comment box and asked the participants to give me feedback on the visuals of my product. There were two comments that were on similar lines as each other, both mentioned improvements that could be made to my project during the rendering stage. This was for me to add more lighting angles and shadows. I’ve taken this into account and have realized the missed potential that I could’ve been getting out of the lighting tools on blender. As before, when I taught myself the basics of modelling, I now want to go back onto YouTube and experiment with lighting techniques inside of Blender.
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