Over the course of the first assessment piece a lot of invaluable skills and knowledge has been learned.
During these first weeks I have had to utilize Autodesk Maya, unreal engine 4 and adobe after effects to create assets, render them and take them through post-processing to create finished animated sequences. The quality of these products has varied, and in some cases was not quite as satisfactory as hoped, but regardless the products were completed and the knowledge and skills by which to create them has been acquired.
To create theses shots, The process of creating a character and rigging it for animation was learned. Despite only using characters created using the Art v1 animation tool my research did provide me with a variety of sources that provided further information on manually rigging characters and animating them, though further practice in this regard is desirable.
The processes surrounding the use of depth and colour masking in Adobe After Effects was also one of those learnt during these weeks.
during the production I found that I preferred the modelling side of things, and that animation tended towards being tedious and difficult to accurately create, as such I feel I would be better suited to focusing on asset development, including modelling and texturing though the other areas worked on will require some further practice as well, as they are highly useful and should not be neglected.
Moving on to assessment 2, I have chosen to stick to the asset development steam, focussing here primarily on the development of environmental assets, which in this case will involve creating at least one, and preferably several, modular structures and environmental features at a production quality to create a realistic and engaging environment.
Throughout the assessment I will strive to improve my skills in designing and developing not only the models themselves, but the environment in total, including building my skills in planning the production such that the final product appears as a single coherent while, something I have had trouble in in the past.
In this, I will be acting as a games artist (https://creativeskillset.org/creative_industries/games/job_roles/330_games_artist), designing and creating all the assets for this production in such a way that they can be re-used consistently to create new and interesting environments as desired.
To continue down this development stream, I will need a number of very particular skills. These skills include the ability to create complex and interesting 3d models from concept art, the ability to unwrap these models appropriately and develop both textures and materials that fit the style of the production. I will also need the ability to effectively utilise Unreal engine 4, and to create blueprints and modular assets in the engine.
In addition to the responsibilities above, I will likely have to create some supplementary 2d artwork to more effectively visualise the assets I will be creating and to plan it all out properly.
For the most part, I feel quite confident in my abilities here, though my ability to create modular assets will stretch my modelling ability and my skills in unreal engine, particularly when it comes to creating blueprints, will require some work to get up to the level needed to finish the project.
Finishing this next assessment piece will require using a number of resources to assist in developing my knowledge and skills, The first such resource that has been identified is Lynda.com, which has an enourmous amount of tutorials that can teach me to use any programs that I find myself requiring the use of.
Another resource that is available is Youtube, for similar reasons, though it is less reliable it has a greater range of content that will allow me to find answers to almost any f the questions I might have in the process of developing the project.
Finally the forum, Polycount, has a great number of resources that could be used to assist in development and if all else fails the community is available to answer question I might have during the production process.