I finally got around to finishing this project from my uni days. I’ve put a lot of work on hold since I left so this is just an attempt to jump back in and produce some work.
Hi, hello, yes it’s me. Yes I know i’ve been gone for ages with nothing to show for it but I thought it’d be worth me updating here; for what it’s worth anyway.
To put things simply: Ever since university ended I have been depressed, uninspired and outright apathetic towards art. Everything related to 3D and art and the future of my career and work just seemed too much, too bleak I just couldn’t bring myself to focus on it. I’ve only admitted to myself recently the way I feel towards being a professional creative, and whilst I still want to pursue it I have no idea where to begin or go and the whole time I’m being crushed under a horrifyingly large feeling of low self esteem.
The months following university seemed like a welcome break from the constant deadlines and overwhelming stress i endured through the final project and dissertation. I mean I had too many breakdowns during my third year and was relieved to just be done with the prolonged stress. I didn’t even attend graduation due to money and I just wanted to live a ‘normal’ life (y’know, paying bills and getting by without student demands). I decided to put my ambitions on hold for a while to just exist and be free of the academic world since i’ve been pushing myself in that regard since I began going to school. I got a job, lost it and then got another and things were enough at that point to leave me content and i didn’t bother paying attention to much else in my life.
It was a few months after I had secured this job that things started to decline. I started to feel lost and suddenly panicked at my lack of progress professional. I was swallowed by a feeling of not going anywhere; a stagnant feeling engulfed my existence.
Was I going to be stuck in a menial job for the rest of my life?
Is this all i’m good for?
Was everybody holding me in such high esteem wrongly?
The brakes slammed down so hard on me I felt sick but hadn’t a clue on where to go or what to do. I spiralled severely into an anxious mess who felt like there was no point to existing but dreaded the idea of suicide. This was the beginning of a dark time for me that still hasn’t let me go but that could change soon.
For the sake of my happiness more than anything I need to start creating again. I’ve always had a difficult relationship with art as I’ve always been hyper critical and never viewed my work to the degree of success that others view it. To me there’s always somebody better, prettier works, more effort being committed, more worthy candidates for praise whilst I just do things without putting my heart into it. I fall in and out of art block so often I even find myself questioning ‘Am i even an artist?’
Art to me as always helped me understand my emotions and work through difficult times. I think I’ve lost myself since the end of my time at university. The complete lack of drive to create upsets me greatly. I lack purpose and I cry about it a lot. I’ve always been the artsy kid, the one who made cool drawings and had great ideas, but now I feel like a shell of my former self. I don’t contact anyone and I spend most of my time slaving away in a kitchen for pennies to pay for debt and bills. Nothing new happens and I find myself pushing myself lazily through the day to day grind of simply existing. I keep dreaming of better things, bigger ideas and yet I seem to fall back into the routine and slump of barely scraping by. Things that once held joy just seemed to fade away and I find myself to this day eating too much junk food, barely leaving the house and hating the very idea of not feeling settled or fulfilled. I crave so much more than I currently have and yet I feel so tired and worn out, it seems almost impossible to strive for anything else at this point.
I bought a new graphics tablet a few days ago- a 13 inch pen display. I decided that I needed to change things. Even though the option of creating again I feel is crucial to me being on the path to better things I can’t help but feel like this game of tug of war is going to be a constant thing.
I often find myself thinking back to the times in my third year where the class was advised to spend the six months following graduation to build on our portfolios and establish some type of presence in the industry but I struggle to remember if there were any directions in terms of who to talk to or where to look for work. Some classmates have excelled immensely in post-uni study and I feel like I’ve fallen off the bandwagon and been left behind. Those six months? Try nearly 2 years of non-productivity bogged down by trying to stay a float amidst a sea of depression and emptiness.
What am I to do when I’m full of anxiety and do not know my own worth? What do I do when I feel like my work is sub par? What do I do when i can’t remember half of the industry required technical knowledge from university?
Honestly I don’t know at this point. The idea of working to create colourful wonderful characters, worlds and objects as a job seems more like a pipe dream than it does a reality. Who knows maybe things will get better from here on out as I start diving back into my passion.
So i got a new job at Pizza Hut working in the kitchen recently and today i finished my training so i’m a fully qualified Pizza Chef now. Enjoy my first creation! 🍕
Showcase improvements
So i received feedback today and need to fix a lot of stuff in time for the showcase. This is what i managed this evening, working to recreate the poster Sas drew. Gonna animate it in time for the showcase and put it on the website and menu screen. Gonna add tentacles to the perimeter of the door and a thudding animation to make it look like something is trying to get in.
Also looking to redo the game layout in general for a better gameplay experience. Gonna follow the advice of making each room a standalone island of sorts and have Jared transport from room to room by collecting his belongings (the belongings teleport him to the next room).
Gonna simplify everything down so it’s easier to interact with.
This is the background music for our game. It is produced by Rye Grover from Ravensbourne and it is exactly what we wanted for our game! We wanted the music to have a childlike, but vaguely eerie feeling to it and be subtle enough so as to not distract from the actual game.
We can’t thank Rye enough for his amazing work and he produced it so quickly as well! Check out his other work here: https://soundcloud.com/ryegrover and https://www.facebook.com/ryegrovermusic/
So after trying to open a corrupted version of this I’ve just spent the last 6 hours or so redoing the lost progress and getting this ready for submission. There are still plenty of things to do and to make but so far it stands as the product we wanted to make in the beginning bar the kitchen having gameplay.
Visually it’s there though.
I have had countless issues with this project and am happy with how it stands visually currently.
I worked on the majority of the 3D assets apart from:
Duck in the bathroom
Toys in the bedroom
Bed
Bookcase
Desk and things on the desk in bedroom
Bathtub
Towels
Toothpaste, toothbrush, soap, shampoo and conditioner
Toilet and sink
Tentacles and wall eye
I also worked on the compiling in Unity and most of the technical issues such as coding and making sure everything worked correctly during test runs.
Leading up to the showcase we plan to have more rooms and a few more assets in these rooms such as:
Modelled some pots and pans for the kitchen and more food for the table. Also put plates on top of the oven hood and some in the sink. Scattered cutlery on the floor to make the kitchen look messy and like a fight has happened. Planning on adding broken plates too.
Added a few more assets to the bathroom to make it feel more lived in. Added a hair dryer, a deodorant and some spilt shampoo and conditioner bottles on the floor. Just need to make a bathmat and a lamp mounted onto the wall near the vanity. (also included a progress shot of the hairdryer since it took a little more work than i originally planned.)
So i made progress on the kitchen today and it’s really come together. Sas sent me the textures over and i reused some of her assets from our walking sim project to cut time. I painted everything according to the colour scheme we decided on and I can’t help but feel like everything has a playset feel to it. Either way i like it. :)
Just gotta fill it up with stuff and we should be good. (Note: Everything looks darker right now because the lights don’t activate until the game is played. Once the WallRemover script is fixed i’ll get screen grabs of how the game would look during gameplay.)
Okay so the bathroom and bedroom are finally finished visually/asset wise. Just working to flesh out and paint the kitchen and have it so the character can access the kitchen through movement.
At the moment the WallRemover script (the thing that makes vision possible throughout the house) isn’t working correctly and I’m hoping it’ll be fixed by submission. Penda is working on it for us which, again, i’m very thankful for. In the case that the game play doesn’t work I’m uploading the visuals here so Ben and Alex can at least see the submission.
Finally managed to upload this bad boy to Sketchfab. Toon shader isn’t supported by the website so i vertex painted him instead and added some lights to give atmosphere.
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