Week 30 - So..Very.. Close..

   After finishing the character project at the very beginning of the week, the rest of my time I spent panicking over the essay and Off the Map. 

   I had to let the essay take priority as the deadline is tomorrow. I've submitted it now and my panicky feelings are easing a bit now that I only have one major deadline to work towards, instead of the three I had at the beginning of the week. It's done.

    I actually found that I really enjoyed the essay, once I had a sort of plan set out of what I was writing. This essay forced me to research and in a way kind of rediscover what it is I love about Game Art. Questioning myself with 'What do I want to do?' really threw me because I had no idea. So writing this essay has kind of led me on a road of self discovery and now that it's over, it's been a really worthwhile and actually enjoyable assignment.

   I also had a chance to really analyse my art books, which is something I love to do anyway, but now I had an excuse! 

   As well as this, on Tuesday we had a presentation for Off The Map. The general consensus and feedback of this was that it looked a bit plain and like a model city and needed more points of interest. Personally, I think that we attempted too large of an area, and we've all become despondent as the project progressed. We were advised to grunge it up, add interesting features like vines, weeds, puddles etc. We were also advised to make some lower poly buildings to put in the skyline, so that it appears to the player like you are in a large city.  So my aim for the remainder of this week is to get the textures I needed to do finished and produce some more paint overs focusing on improvements we could make to the level based on the feedback we had. We're also going to add more street furniture to clutter up the street. At the moment it looks like a bit of a ghost town, so we need to add more assets to make it more enjoyable to play through. We have also been thinking about changing the time of day as well, and give more dramatic lighting effects to make it more interesting.

   Although I have mostly been focusing on the essay for the past few days, I did manage to get all of the apothecary textures and all of my set assets for the interior of the apothecary finished and started to place them in engine. The apothecary is my favourite part that I've done so far, and I'm really looking forward to seeing the other assets that are being made inside it.

   I kind of can't wait until the deadline passes for this, because I'm going to be working on a personal project with Lucy Burbidge and Amanda Bruce. We're going to build a stylized, low poly level based off of the fairy tale, Hansel and Gretel. I'm so excited for this and have done a few quick concepts, but it'll be good to get properly into it once we've finished with Off the Map. In the mean time though, I'm going to be giving my full attention to Off the Map for the next two weeks!