WEEK 1

Day 1: 

To start off the project today we have been given a run down of all the requirements necessary to complete our projects, to simplify this; we was given a variety of options to chose from and the option that appealed to me the most was Prop Art. This has enabled me to play to my strengths with sculpting based work; along with this also it has offered the opportunity to learn photogrammetry which is widely used in industry and can give a cutting edge when it comes to portfolio reviews in the future.

The two props I'm planning to create are as following: 

.Oni Mask- With my Oni mask prop, I'm planning to use traditional pipeline methods to create this asset- using inspiration and influence of For Honor; trying to make the prop feel as if it could belong in that world and fit in with a consistent style.

As Ubisoft is one of the companies that really interest me with the incredible levels of detail in their rich environments, I believe it will be inspiring as a project to run with this and push my skills to the point where I feel it matches with quality also.

.Doctor Martin Boot- Learning photogrammetry is something that will certainly take some practice; trial and error etc. However, I still want a model that is going to be challenging, yet in the same respect not incredibly overly complicated to the point where I'm struggling with the time constraints given; I believe with good practice it will create nice visual interest as an asset. Again, relating back to Ubisoft, however, this time looking at the kind of world that 'The Division' is, and making the prop feel a part of that world; much like the Oni mask, I aspire to create the prop to a standard that is consistent and coherent with the quality work that the triple AAA game has. 

For the next few days I'm starting to plan out the following:

1. A schedule to best manage my time on the project (setting this out week by week should be specific enough for me to reach weekly goals)
2. My Art bible- this is a super key area for the project, I need to view it and treat it as if others have to look at this art bible, look at the outcome of the work and are able to create clear links between the two.
3. Learning photogrammetry, using resource videos and experimenting, I need to learn about how it works to get a good gauge of how long it could take me to create the prop.
4. Visit to the British museum to get some real life first hand references of some Oni masks that I can use for my prop research.

Day 2:

Today has been an interesting day; already one of the two assets I plan to create have changed. Due to the nature of Prop Art, I couldn't find necessarily a very interesting Oni mask that would be fun and visually interesting to replicate. However in a recent visit to the British museum I found some fantastic sculptures of Buddha statues. When i ran this through with my tutor he really approved of the idea of creating this asset, therefore this will be a much more interesting project.

I will still even be able to hit all the targets i set out with tailoring my work around certain games to strive to create assets that could be believable if put into the environment. 

I feel that today was a super productive day; I managed to get started on my art bible, filling this with as much descriptive research is going to be super essential for creating a strong project with good direction. I've already begun looking at things such as Ubisoft job ads, and doing an analysis on if my skills match the requirements they need from a prop artist.

 Budai: Image of the prop I will be making through traditional pipeline methods.                

Day 3:

I've now flushed out a good basis for my project brief, as well as art bible. From seeking feedback and getting one of the tutors to review the content I currently have it has given me confidence that they are pleased with the subject matter and content of the work I will be doing as well as the production planning done in the process. This has enabled me in my spare time to begin blocking out forms for one of my props, and therefore get ahead of my schedule.

Here's a current Zbrush sketch of where i am with blocking out the forms. There are certainly some proportion issues i intend to fix soon.

Another thing I've looked at is creating a skills Audit; this has enabled me to compare my own skills in comparison to those of the industry standard required for the aspired job role.

Day 4:

Today was a good opportunity to watch over a photogrammetry workshop; this enabled me to get to grips with the process of photogrammetry and how quickly you can get good results from the photos. In terms of my time schedule I think I may of over estimated the amount of time needed for this particular model however, that can be reviewed at a later date and the worst case is im left with more time to act upon any feedback my tutors or peers have for me.

This was also a good day to focus and try to polish up my art bible. Having this done ahead of Tuesday's presentations will give me more time to focus on the project development. 

Day 5:

Budai Statue- Working on the Budai statues main basic forms, I can already tell this will be challenging when it comes to the detailing section of the high poly sculpting/ detail modelling. I still believe this will be a manageable task and I feel fully engaged in the challenges it's providing for the development. 

One issue I may encounter is the complexity of the base. This particular statue has a very unique and strange wooden base; Due to material it's wear and unique cuts, imperfections and detail levels are very high all around. This could potentially take up more time than I would like it to. I will need to collect more reference images by returning the the museum, if I want a more accurate recreation of the statue.

Week 2:

Day 6:

I begun my practicing of photogrammetry today, taking a total of 457 images. So far this is my first time in reality capture so learning the process's required to clean up some of the areas which aren't great in the quality; as it stands i'm expecting to have to retake some images as I feel there could be more detail captured in some of the model.

Day 7:

Continuing my work in Photogrammetry I've been experimenting with clean up process's and found some very nice results in a lot of areas in the shoe; still I have some issues round the top of the shoe, label and laces. This could be due to not having enough images, I'll get some feedback, and see how I can move forwards to improve some of the geometry results from the scan.

Day 8-9:

The last few days have been incredibly busy for me. I've had to use all my time in refining my Budai Sculpt. However, in terms of my schedule this is still on track for me. Not to mention, that I also but myself ahead by learning about photogrammetry in the early week. This means that next time I should get nice clean results that I can work with and I understand now that the process is short so i have little to worry about in terms of time management.

I also had the chance to propose my idea to my tutors and the rest of the class. in regards to the extensive research I made, I had some great comments back from tutors, which was fantastic and my ideas where approved. This has allowed me to now go full steam ahead with the development of my assets, a few areas I could extend on my art bible. However, as a main point my research has been completed to a good amount, therefore I've given myself more time to work with my prop assets.

This is the current stage I'm at with the Budai statue. I'm rather happy as it is, but i need to push my skills further. Therefore, Looking at little details that could be inconsistent between reference and my model as it stands. Doing this should help me increase my sculpting skills, and overall skills as an artist.

Week 3:

Day 10:

As I've now spent a fair amount of time on the statue, I got some feedback from my tutor to look at all the forms in, and give his opinion on the proceedings going forward; due to having to complete a second prop within the time frame given, this is something that has to constantly be taken into consideration, time management is going to be essential for this project when there is more than one prop to make.

The conclusion we had come to is that I have a good amount of time to spend a few days polishing up the quality of my model. it's good enough as it is to perhaps go to the next stage, but in terms of pushing my skills further, looking at the micro details and differences between my model and the real statue. Acting upon this feedback, it should increase my skills with my attention to detail and overall increase the quality of my work. It does bend my schedule slightly. But, in preparation for things like this occurring, I spared up my last week so I can have a few days leverage in areas should I need it.

Day 11:

Much like the last few days I've spent even more time trying to refine the features of my statue sculpt. Looking at how my skills have improved from previous projects and how I'm now paying much more attention to detail in my models, this particular sculpture is proving to be quite the challenge with refining some of the sharper features; anyone that has at any point sculpted fabrics, they will know just how challenging it is to make them feel natural and believable, which is where I feel most of my time is going at the moment. Forever being wary of the time I have left on the project I'm going to have to start using up the time I had free on the last week so that I can keep on Schedule. I think proceeding forwards, I'm aiming to begin quad drawing and texturing by the end of the week. 

As the statue is at the moment, I only need to move a few pieces around in the scene to flush out the likeness better.

Day 12:

Today was completely invested in the preparation of my low poly and setting up my UV maps, so I could move forwards to the texturing stage of the process. I believe that now the majority of the final details are going to be captured through this. All in all, I feel like it was a productive day, however, I feel like my quad drawing was some what slow at some points, it was my first time doing this, so taking my time to get the topology correct was a challenge but also very good experience. I can now understand the benefits of hand drawn retopology. Though I didn't leave myself much time left for UV's; my quad drawing had made the process of creating UV's much simpler as I knew where I wanted my cuts to be, and I also considered this when creating specific edge flow. In some areas, it certainly isn't perfect. Yet, I feel that it was very clean overall. 

Finishing the optimising of topology and UV's before the weekend has been really helpful as I can start planing for the texturing stage, as well as get my photogrammetry pictures taken again in the next coming week.

Week 4:

Day 13:

Very productive all round day; I got some brilliant feedback from tutors about direction and how to now best manage time to ensure I complete all the work I have left to do. The quality of my Budai Statue has reached a stage now where It's a solid model with a little more refining needed on the texturing; I much longer process than originally anticipated due to the nature of the materials being all very unique. The best way to capture the enamel like appearance on the robe is to hand paint the detail into the texture. Apart from the lengthy outlook on this, I'm very pleased that I have been able to complete it thus far and to a good standard in all elements. 

For the next few days the plan is as followed:

.Finish texturing- Latest by Wednesday

.Photogrammetry- (Retake shots of Boot), Ideally start this Wednesday, If not, this must be started by Thursday.

.Retopo Mesh for Photogrammetry and UV in preparation for Texturing.

.Texture the Boot

.Present them both inside of unreal engine

I plan for this to take me up to the start of next week- this is my own soft deadline to myself so I can complete my work with plenty of time before the hand in date arrives. This just allows me a little more time in the end to proof check everything before the submission date.

Day 14:

I managed to complete my texturing work to a stage of where I'm happy with the result; I challenged myself to create a tilling pattern to go around the robe by taking aspects from the actual statue and making it quick and modular. which proved to be very effective.

Day 15:

I've finally begun to set up my unreal scene to showcase my props once they're finished. Doing this now stops me from rushing the final presentation; instead I can chip away at the final look in engine and refine the way I show my work. 

Along side of this I've restarted my work in photogrammetry, after a rather lengthy sitting of taking photographs for 3.5 hours and getting 1065 images of my Boot. I'm a lot more pleased this time over with the end result and therefore can begin to export the mesh and hopefully finish the prop by the start of next week.

Day 16:

I have now placed my photographs into Reality capture and on the most part the data is super clean; and with that I'm very happy with the result- It captured high levels of detail in the 'Normal' detail mode, to the point I could even read a label on the inside of the shoe word for word! The trade off for getting these nice and clean high quality results is really the amount of time it takes to calculate the information and generate the mesh, for example, The preview mode for me takes about 2-3 minutes to calculate the mesh in a low level of detail. Where as in normal mode, it took around 3.5-4 Hours to generate the mesh. I attempted High levels of detail but it would of taken around 16 hours to generate my mesh. next week, I should be able to set up a computer early in the morning to run this process throughout the day; this was my highpoly will have the highest level of detail possible.

We also had a materials artist from Rebellion Games come teach a lesson today on substance designer and painter, after which he also proceeded to see the students work and give valuable feedback and suggestions to improve in areas. For me, we spoke about how to create a better clear coat effect inside of engine, using something simple like a Fresnel added a tiny light rim that suggested the clear coat to be a lot more apparent which was super handy. To add to this, he also suggested making some detailed normal maps to add to the mesh to get the high frequency details even when in close to the model- I think this would be awesome to complete as an extra level of detail when showcasing my asset. Therefore, over the course of tomorrow, I'll try to create some Detailed normal maps.

Week 5:

Day 17:

For the start of the week, I've finished the re topology of my Boot, and well within my poly count budget, this is really good as this is an area I really wanted to improve on. Furthermore, I've begun texturing the boot now and without finishing the roughness values and restoring the original colour. It's a very quick process to get right and realistic looking results very quickly.

In regards to following my feedback; I've created my detail normal maps- one with a clay base and another that has a wavy, distorted and crack look. Both of which with a little tweaking (i.e the normal intensity) Have worked incredibly well in engine and give nice up close detail. Of course this may not be necessary if looking at in in a practice. However, Displaying this for my portfolio just gives subtle differences that enhances the overall look. 

I also received another little bit of feedback today from my tutor, I need to now focus on making these little amendments; the base colour of the robe just currently doesn't have enough colour variation. So using some of the reference images I have I plan to turn them into stamps, blending them with the already hand painted base to get the realistic results I'm aspiring for. 

Intro:

For my Specialism Project, I have been given a few weeks to create a character bust and present it as a statue inside of unreal engine. Throughout this project I will be considering really focusing on the details of the bust of this character; creating an obvious personality and characteristics that can familiarise a player with an environment that they're in.

For example, I will be heavily looking into the style of jewellery and clothing in the 1950's, as it will be important for the character to feel very period to the specific time; this will then go hand in hand with the group project upcoming 'Bioshock In London'. 

Art Bible Development:

Breakdown:

For the process of development in this project, is rather simple: I begun all my modelling and sculpting inside Zbrush, this does include my highpoly and lowpoly models. With this particular model, I found that it was challenging to just focus on the bust of a character and the importance of creating personality, age, and general characteristics from a small section of the body. 

Due to being experienced in Zbrush my workflow is quite refined- consisting of; 

1. Creating a block form
2. Taking my block form and remeshing the mesh with guide lines to keep a good edge flow.
3. Working in subdivisions (essential for an accurate high to low poly bake)
4. Taking the low poly into blender for UV Mapping and material allocation
5. Marmoset baking for specific results (eliminating any normal baking errors)
6. Texturing in substance painter, following a particular rule of mine- to add the curvature and Ambient occlusion maps, this helps to create a stylised look to a model.
7. Bringing into unreal engine 
8. Creating Lighting that compliments the model and it's materials
9. colour grading 
10. post processing effects to complete composition

 This is currently, my most common process for creating game ready assets- even through the project I had some slight changes; prior to this, I hadn't used blender, nor did I bake my maps inside of marmoset- but, in doing so, I've created a much higher quality model; for me this is the most efficient way of creating a high quality asset.

Using blender as part of my process is something new to my workflow, and i must say it is incredibly intuitive; I purely used it for creating UV maps and it felt so streamlined, and user friendly, that it wasn't too time consuming once i understand the basic functions and controls of the software.

Feedback Review:

Feedback is something I always feel that I could do better with; however for this project I've certainly reflected on a lot of the feedback given- this is most evident in the character; I wanted to create a fairly young looking attractive lady; however, peers originally saw her to be an old lady, with reflecting on this feedback I was able to improve the model and make it more accurate to the original intentions I had with the character.

Weekly Reflection:

Week 1:

First week of the general production was mainly spent concepting my character and developing a proxy model for me to go off before committing to any hard details within my bust. Developing my art bible and unit brief was also a big part of this week: I wanted to ensure this was developed and finished early on, this was due to having a very short amount of time to complete the specialism project. 

I found that in this week I was very time efficient and it allowed me for a lot more time to focus on the quality of my asset.

Week 2:

Week 1 (Introduction to the project)

.This new 6 week project is to simply make a diorama environment. One of the main things I need to consider is the best way to structure my idea as well as the idea itself. 

.This brief also teaches Z brush, which is rather necessary for such a project. This is already very handy as i have a good amount of experience in the software prior to the project.

.The majority of my week has been spent trying to obtain some references for ornamental decal and items i might want to have included in my environment: The theme being based around a deal with a devil. The most immediate struggle/ obstacle i see with this is the gathering of references that could be fitting based on 'the Devils' office. However, on the other side of looking at this- i can be as surreal with the environment as i like; meaning i can extract certain elements of my reference imagery. 

Week 2- (Block out and substance designer intro)

.To start the week we have been introduced to substance designer; a really awesome software that i will certainly be using a lot more to create cool procedural textures. this will be very handy for my diorama as i'm enabled to Have complete control over the look of my textures. One thing i am wary of about this is that i only have a short amount of time for my project so it is important to remember that throughout making my materials. However, this does allow me to very quickly make procedural textures that can be changed with a lot of ease: Seeing as i want to create a project based around a deal with the devil and i want a stylish atmosphere coming from his office: I want to create a nice clean wood for the scene; and using substance designer will allow me to customise the wood as much as I like with its node based system, very quickly and efficiently.

.Vertex painting- We also got the opportunity to learn a little about vertex painting (blending materials) in unreal engine, as well as tessellation for extra detail in height blend. This will be very handy and exciting to use in my diorama as it can bring out a lot of the grunges and other fine decals i want to implement. I'm not sure if I'll be using it in this project however; yet the application of it can be used in future projects especially for breaking up large scale tilling.

So far i believe my engagement with the project has enabled me to get a reasonable amount of work done in an early stage of the process- I the feel that this will enable me to experiment more within this project being that i have been able to get a good majority of my blockout done at a very early point within the project. Furthermore, I've also learned some very useful techniques that could be used within my project like procedural materials.

Week 3:

.Progress shots of my blockout so far have been taken. I believe that for where i currently am in this project i have done a lot of the work in sculpting and composition blockout already.

With regards to the week i'm going to need to work on some more materials for my characters and environment assets- as well as ensure all my assets are in the scene by the end of the week. For the characters I've been investing a lot of time into them as they're a big essence within my scene: for the next part of their development I will need to think about posing these characters and the best way to do it. I'm likely at this point to be using the transpose master tool as its something I already have experience in within Zbrush and it may help refine my skills in using the particular tool.

This has been an interesting week for my project, during lessons we looked at vertex painting and material blending inside of unreal engine, which gave a helpful insight in how to be able to freely paint between textures on a mesh, this will be incredibly good especially when breaking up some tilling textures.

During lessons we learnt about foliage for games. Despite there not being any foliage within my scene; i was still able to benefit from the lesson because it taught me a little more about subsurface scattering and how it functions on a model. This was then applied to my character models in the scene to improve their textures and heighten their realistic sense. And to further add to this I learnt about sequencer which has really been helpful as i can now show off certain sections of my Diorama through the sequencer; this will be very helpful for my presentation as well as my portfolio; being able to achieve certain composition and trying to illustrate the story of 'A Deal with the Devil', can become more interesting just through the sequencer. This will be something I'll begin working on nearer towards the end of the project.

This is the current state of my blockout at this stage of the project; I feel that i have a good understanding of a good composition layout for the diorama already.

  Week 4:

.Week 4 is mostly consisting of refinement of my own project currently: finishing models and adding in more lighting and textures has been my primary focal point. Getting some good feedback of what i can include in my scene from peers and tutors has allowed me to change the setting in my scene to be more fitting to the mood i'm trying to emulate in my Diorama. 

Another aspect of my Diorama I've change is the overall scale of the project; I decided that as i wanted to have a focal point of 'The victim' signing his contract with the Devil- making the scene more compact has allowed me to refine where the viewer is going to look; and as its the most well lit area of my scene, any viewers at first glance will be attracted to the brightest part of my Diorama.

Throughout the rest of the duration of the week; I aim to refine more of my textures and include some smaller asset props to fill some of my empty spaces within the scene.

We Had a very useful lighting lesson from a member of the lighting artists from Splash Damage; He gave a fantastic demo which allowed me to have a much more in depth understanding to lighting an environment inside of UE4; He looked at my scene and suggested that I add contrasting colours to my scene so it doesn't feel so monotone. And since acting on his feedback my scene feels a lot more exciting and well lit.

In regards to the texturing process, I have found that a nice way to get a stylised effect is to use my baked curvature map when texturing; this allows me to outline all the curves and crevices within a model and contributes greatly towards the overall look development.

Over the course of the next few weeks i plan to do subtle changes to the scale of the scene to make it feel more compact; as well as various other lighting fixtures as it's important for the style of art i'm trying to achieve through the project. Furthermore following the lesson i had with the lighting artist from splash damage i'm intending on focusing on lighting a fair amount to get the absolute most out of it in my scene: strong contrasting colours is a big essence within the diorama i'm trying to create. I feel this lighting knowledge will allow me to take the project further, and achieve better results. As I managed to get ahead a reasonable amount with the modelling and textures; this has allowed me much more time to experiment with the lighting in my scene and how it portrays the composition overall. 

Week 5:

Over the course of the week I had set myself targets from the prior week that I wanted to achieve: especially with the scale of some of the silhouette area; Which I proactively engaged with to try make the composition as eye catching to the centre as possible. Looking back I can see that there was a lot of dead space lingering in the left that distracts the viewer away from the main focal point. This was only achieved by the insights of others; My peers perspectives had allowed me to make a change to the Diorama that has been computationally very beneficial.

Furthermore, at the end of the week we had a very good presentation: The purpose of this presentation was so that we could show progress over the prior weeks; the current stage of where we currently are. and share this with the class- I found this incredibly useful, as it gave me a good opportunity to illustrate my work and seek the classes opinion on what they would like to see tweaked; The course of the week consisted of a lot  of constructive criticism, this highlighted the importance of other perspectives to me as they highlighted problems to me that i didn't necessarily notice before. This is something that i probably could have looked for throughout previous projects and I feel that my project has benefited more from getting more feedback, I can now apply this in my future projects more regularly.

Week 6:

For week 6 we had the start of the week learning speed tree: for my scene in particular I didn't use any vegetation within the office scene as i didn't feel it would entirely fit within the environment: However, the learning of the process will come in handy for the group project coming up. Throughout the duration of the rest of the week: I aimed to polish up the project as much as I could- especially with some of the details that my peers and tutor had commented on in the prior presentation. Some of which i was successful in like making sure to change the carpet material and polishing up the direction of the wooden floor boards and ceiling. I also had to spend a bit of time sorting out the project to ensure it was uploaded correctly and packaging. 

applying what we had learnt in class about the sequencer inside of unreal engine; I really tried to create a good sequencer that could show the composition around the environment and the project as a whole; this was a fun learning process as it gave me an understanding of how to create a cool cinematic for a game and could definitely be used in the future very quickly and easily.

At this point of the project where it concludes; i'd say overall i'm very pleased with the result of the Diorama, I chose a challenging concept to run with and I believe that I executed it to a very good standard; there are still issues within the project that I have acknowledged. Yet, I think that the challenge of the project and the problems encountered has developed my overall ability as an artist and improved my skills for future projects. 

Presentation!

On Friday i presented my work to the rest of the class and one of my tutors; This consisted of showing my Art Bible, as well as the build for the game: This I feel went well as I feel the project came across clear through it's concept and illustrated through to the build of my Diorama. The class made some good points of areas that could have been refined a little better like the direction of the UV's around the edge of the floor boards; the material got pulled out and broke up some of the direction; this will be something i'm now going to be polishing more often, furthermore, I realised something interesting about the optimisation of UV's within the scene and the difference it can have on a texture. in Future projects this is something i will certainly do consistently as I've now seen the difference it can make to an environment.  However, overall i'm pleased with the outcome, I feel as though I did well to capture the scene I did within a 6 week time frame; creating 2 characters and an environment for them within the time given i feel really did challenge me and i came out with a good result that i am pleased with. Reflecting back, I feel from what I've learned throughout the project if i was to do it again, i'd try to be more thorough with some of my UV optimisations as I've seen the difference it can make through some of my assets. In addition to this I Would add some more detail/ objects within the scene just in some of the more empty areas like above the fireplace. However with the knowledge i have of creating Diorama's, i believe i could achieve this quality of work being more time efficient and polish areas brought up in the presentation as i'd have a little more time to do so.

To conclude, I Believe the project was successful from original concept the final Build, some aspects changed along the way of the process but i feel the end result best fit the scene and the mood set in this environment: the Devils office.

The Unit Brief and Beginning to generate Ideas;

 So far for the second year of Games Art, the unit brief (for our six week project) has been given to us, First impressions of this brief, being that we need to produce a side-scroller game, optimal for mobile tablet use, it is In fact incredibly exciting.

My starting thoughts/ concept idea's:

.'Giant Crazy Golf'- As a personal lover of crazy golf, my first thoughts was to make a side scroller game as a character that navigates their way through an enormous crazy golf course with cool puzzles and obstacles to make the game challenging. As I'm fond of this idea I've already taken the initiative to grab some source imagery from a local crazy golf course that could give some inspiration for design aspects in the environment of this game! 

Primary interest towards this project is the creative freedom it can hold: crazy golf in itself is designed to be CRAZY! So, i can use this to my advantage to create more interesting environments within the game. Although it will be important to not go too over board with this as i need to keep referring to the optimising of the game and the restraints this holds.

All of the Areas around this course was entirely diverse and different, changing the atmosphere and environment around you- Perhaps applying this to a game to change mood sets or obstacle differences, maybe even using this as a way to make each level different from the last. 

Bullet Point thoughts of the Design reference images:

.Interesting Wall Designs
    .Overall Greenery is a prodonement colour for large sections

.Interesting and random objects/ Obstacles that make the scenery more enjoyable

 . Obstacles that look challenging- could in essence make the game-play seem difficult, maybe intimidate a player, or even excite them!
 .wallpaper textures that create optical illusions and vary with each wall panel. Offers a more diverse and dynamic exploration basis for individual and unique areas in an environment.

Week 1 Overview:

An issue I've already encountered is the art board stage, I have enough reference imagery to begin this 'Giant Mini Golf' concept and run with it for the next 6 weeks. However, before Friday i need to present different ideas. On one hand this is a good opportunity to think if i can generate any better ideas, maybe something i could potentially be more engaged with, and make the overall experience of the game more fun. On the other side, I feel strongly about this Design Idea, as it leaves a lot of open space for creative exploration- changing the environment throughout the course of the same level can put emphasis on the crazy part of this games universe.

Planning out the art boards as drafts: Currently two out of the three i'm defiantly more inspired by;

I feel that i can generate a more interesting game environment with my more favoured concepts being; 'Giant Crazy Golf' and 'City Runner' 

Puzzle ideas draft for game mechanics: good to understand early on in the project as it gives me more time to think about how they will work within the environment.

Week 2: 

Progression of the art bible has been consistent; Having a large amount of reference imagery has made this incredibly easy for asset building and general progression of this project.

At the moment i'm struggling to be satisfied with the depth and verticality of my project; i'm going to be dedicating some time to refine the blockout and ensure that the game environment feels as it should be before making a lot of progress into the refinement of the project.

From the classes I've begun setting some interactivity tasks for me to strive for within my project:

1) Colour selection for the ball- 

We all know that this is a definitive factor of crazy golf- having the choice of character colour selection gives it a more diverse feeling in its reality and immersive experience.

2) The player Uses a lever to open up a passage 

3) The Windmill. I can't be the only person to have ever found the windmill daunting in a game of crazy golf; Giving this windmill the ability to spin around and potentially knock the player off their course can majorly affect their score in a game of crazy golf, so implementing this daunting windmill to me would make a fun little interaction. 

These interactions feel achievable within my game; as well as fitting for the theme.

Art Bible

I feel that my art Bible is progressing very nicely- I would like to populate it a little more however: over the course of my weekend it could be very beneficial to add some more content into the art bible: increasing the visualisation of the project- making sure its clear for others to interpenetrate clear methods of workings out.

Goals/ What i want to achieve

.2 levels complete with 1 hero asset for each

.A lighthearted experience for the player just to have some fun

.interesting and unique environment

/colour is very important in the scene- keep vibrant 

.Interactions- Cannon shot; get passed a dreaded windmill (cannon and windmill fit together), climb into the mouth of a clown to fall into the golf hole.

Within just a week i have managed to successfully make a large amount of progress within my environment; Piecing together the last of the blockout and beginning to refine certain areas of the map: I'm consciously aware that i'm going to need to test this regularly to see how optimal the game is going to run when played on the tablet device.

I'm generally very pleased with the pace my scene is developing at; with this work progression it will give me more time to focus on the environment of the game as well as the interactivity; i want the experience to also be fun for players.  

For the following week; i'm going to need to devise a work plan over the next few weeks so i can set some goals for myself and keep to a good consistent time schedule.

Friday- I had my tutor present my own Art Bible; this was definitely interesting as it was an opportunity to see if my game concept conveyed over to others and not just myself. It also opened more doors of possibilities for the game environment; for example, he suggested some ways i could make some of the interactions more fun- i'll be sure to take the feedback on board over the course of the next few days and perhaps adapt my interactions so it feels more fun for the player.

An overall summery of the week would be best described as very practical- i have shot ahead in the development process and already near the end of my blockout stage- this will allow me more time to consider and think about alternative ideas that i might want to implement into my environment. to add to this, it also gives me fine tuning time; meaning if i follow the same work ethic and standard i should be left with plenty of time to ensure the game environment is as crisp as possible.

Week 3:

To start the week I've had a good start in understanding how i'm going to make the most out of lights, as they need to be static i need to think about how to get optimal lighting with the most minimal point lights possible- researching into making mobile game optimal lighting would be beneficial for the section of the project where it will be lighting intensive; more so towards the end of the project where i'll need to make the game viable for a mobile device.

I've managed to input one of my main hero assets for the end level. Entering the clowns mouth to fall into the hole is something amusing and fun at the same time really giving off the crazy golf feeling- the next step will be to implement my hero asset for the second level: being a pirate ship it might take a little longer; and the interaction will be slightly more complex.

The second level interaction idea being the player being able to be shot from a cannon, over the ship and into the crazy golf hole: this in terms of blueprints shouldn't be overly complex to set up meaning i can flesh out the velocity and in essence how i'm going to make the level challenging for the player.

Throughout the course of the week I've found that I have dedicated a fair amount of time on the camera movement and lighting; on one hand i feel that at this early stage i may have gone a bit to far ahead with the lighting. Alternatively it enabled me to learn a lot about baking lights inside unreal engine to get nice looking results. especially around my clown themed end level. 

I need to divert my focus however into the final level of my game now; implementing the last of my assets- i want to refine my goals and structure a more specific schedule for the end of the project: this will enable me to refer back to my personal progress; this is very important if i want to reach a point in the project that i'm happy with. 

I feel that my progress throughout the week has slowed down a little- yet i believe that has a lot to do with trying to learn and understand blueprints better- and putting some focus on implementing them into my game to enhance the in game experience. Having a plan in place for the next few weeks of the project will really be beneficial to keep on track.

At the end of this week we had a session dedicated to formative assessments- this has allowed for me to have a deeper under standing of the direction in which my project is heading; being able to filter out what needs to be added to the project to make it better; one thing that was mentioned was that by creating a second level for the game I've given myself a lot more work to do- it could make it more tricky to refine, but i prefer to challenge myself and invest more time into it- By doing this slightly bigger environment also gives me the opportunity to have some diverse interactions- as supposed to having a generic pattern of interaction in my game- i can give some unique interactions such as: shooting the character through a cannon into a golf hole (being the end of level 2) This special finisher just shows a diverse style between the two levels- both requiring precision and timing, yet they both take different approaches.

Week 4:

To start the week in lesson we've been looking at substance designer- this was actually very useful as i took what i learnt and applied it into my own environment. creating a tile-able texture for water in my scene- utilising substance designer also allowed me to get a feeling in real time of how to overall texture would look on a plane; as this was the geometry it was going to be placed on i found this incredibly useful. 

In regards for the rest of the week i have set up a schedule that will help me keep on track up until the end of the session: making sure i reach all the goals i want to before the submission.

I also received some really good and helpful feedback from my tutor about my scene; he brought to my attention he would like to see some roe refinement in my lamps within the scene seeing as they're very much in the foreground for the character to see. In addition to this, he also commented on the way the player moves through the clown: Adding some tubing going through the clown could be a cool addition to the scene to really illustrate the crazy golf feeling.

Week 5;

Following what my tutor had informed me of; in that by making a second level I've made a lot more work for myself. However, i'm very pleased with this decision as it's made my game feel more unique and diverse with clear environment transitions to new levels. Most of this week has been spent generally refining my interactions and blueprints. Due to the smooth camera kit not working within my scene, I've blueprinted all my camera movements from the start of the game to the end, I've been able to control camera movement with time lines which effect the transition of how the camera moves along a value input: It has definitely been a very interesting process that has helped me understand blueprints in further depth. 

Week 6: 

The Start of the week has been a hectic process, refining the last of my blueprints as well as art work. one of my concerns has been getting the end of the game to work efficiently and reopen the game, It took up a little more time than what i would have liked- however i'm pleased with the results as a whole as i have the fundamentals of it working. 

As a last minute touch I've learnt a little bit about Fresnel inside of unreal engine and it has allowed me to add some cool looking lighting effects around main objects inside my environment that the player is able to interact with. 

Reflecting back on my project, i'd say that it's been a massive learning process inside of unreal engine 4 about how to make an environment and have interesting interactions. On the art side of the project i already have a lot of experience. Alternatively in terms of the interactivity this was something new and exciting to me- i'm glad I Invested some good time into the learning of blueprints as it's allowed me to have some more interesting interactions in my environment. In regards to the environment and its art, i'm pleased with its outcome- it has kept a strong aesthetic throughout the world and even between levels it still feels like the same game, but transitions nicely into a new level. From this project I've certainly learned how important it is to keep a good, clean and tight organisation structure from the get go, i found that on the last day of the project, i spent a bit more time than i'd like to renaming and organising some folders for the submission that had been left for a while. But with this knowledge it can be applied to future projects from the start.

If i was to redo this project I think the main thing i would change is a few of the models: for example, i would have liked to just add some certain details in some of the props like the lamps that the player interacts with; this was pointed out to me in some formative assessment- I Changed the properties of the materials originally and it felt a lot nicer, however, given more time i believe it would have been a good idea to refine some of those details.  

Overall with my project i'm pleased with the result and from what i have learnt about making a playable game, fun and with a cool looking environment; learning new aspects about decals and blueprints has been good skills to develop and helps me as an all round artist to broaden my skill sets. I'm certainly pleased with how i engaged with the project from early on making quick plans and ideas easy due to having more time to do so. I even devised myself a rough schedule for me to follow which enabled me to stay in check through the later weeks coming towards the submission which is definitely helpful for keeping good structure. As a whole i feel that i exceeded my own expectations with the overall execution of the game- As it was my first game inside unreal i learnt throughout the development all the way up to the end of the packaged game which helped improve my game along the way.