Week 6 - Thursday: Reflection on my Project Management

I am nearing the end of week six and this marks the official halfway point of my project. Therefore I think I have had a sufficient amount of time to review the management of my project so far. I am going to be using the structure of Gibbs' Reflective Cycle to organise my thoughts below.

Over the past six weeks I have focused my efforts primarily on modelling the high poly and low poly assets for my environment. This has culminated in the first fully modelled area of the mansion scene, the entrance hall. Because I hadn't concerned myself with the lighting stage yet, everything was looking very flat and I wasn't happy with the overall look of the scene. It wasn't until recently that I added lights to the scene that have really helped it pop:

I feel just being able to see the scene lit in a nice way has given me so much confidence. Now that I have seen how the environment looks with this early lighting setup, I at least have an idea of how the final environment will look once I finish. Knowing that has helped me to speed up my modelling process as I know where the points of interest are in the scene. Going forward from here I think that I will be able to bring assets into unreal engine quicker because I know which areas are going to be seen thanks to the lighting.

So far I think that this project has been successful mainly due to the fact that it has provided me with the opportunity to model a decent range of high quality assets. I am particularly pleased with my armchair model as I used this piece as a test to help me present my portfolio better and it was met with positive feedback from environment artist Ryan Astley. I have opted for quality over quantity, as I would rather have a selection of polished assets in my portfolio than a large environment filled with mediocre ones.

That being said however, I was hoping to have much more completed by this point. I want the final game environment to give a sense of grandeur and scale and I believe I will need to have the exterior completed alongside a few additional rooms to achieve this.

As I continue to model assets and improve the lighting of the environment, I am going to be looking at other artefacts being produced by game developers to gain insight into the creative approaches they have employed and compare my own process to them. I think that a decent understanding of lighting for film and Mise-en-Scene will help me perfect the final look of the environment.

GIBBS, G. (1988) Learning by Doing: A guide to teaching and learning methods. Further Education Unit. Oxford Polytechnic: Oxford.