Progress Blog: Year 2 Week 24 -4-6-2021
I’m going to be honest, I’ve been slacking a lot when it comes to doing blogs, as you can probably tell. I don’t have an excuse, it was just me being lazy and forgetful with the other gamejam coming up in addition to a strange week before spring break.
To start things off, let’s talk about the gamejam. The theme for that one was “strike”, and after a sleepness night, I didn’t have too many ideas as a designer that I can remember. What I do remember is that we agreed on it being a “story based game where you descend into a cave or mine.” From that point forward, I was honestly pretty lost compared to the visions that Savannah and Riley were proposing, while Eric just acted as a yes man without doing any work, really. I tried proposing ideas that incorporated a lot of the 2D artists on the team considering how many we had, but most of them got shot down because “we have enough 3D people”. In addition to this, there was a lot of conflict in terms of vision between designers, specifically Savannah and I, and I think it’s because I might be a bit stubborn, but it felt like they were really defensive of some ideas. Either way, after day two, I realize that I wasn’t being beneficial to design and just adding conflict, so I stepped away from it so that I could work on whatever 3D assets were needed for the game in addition to level design where I could. So when it came to making 3D assets, there was some miscommunication as to what was needed by designers, at least in terms of specifics with a ton of vague instructions that didn’t have much description, while Riley and I worked on making the models for cave using modifiers I haven’t touched before, so that was a nice learning experience. Outside of that, spent some time making models for the final room in the game, which would be a small dining room, so I made chairs, a table, paintings, a cabinet, and a bottle. Outside of this, I also spent time doing collisions for one of the caves, and I am thoroughly impressed by the fact that I have found something that can rival my feelings for UV mapping in terms of tedium. At least UV mapping can be relaxing to an extent though, with this being utterly frustrating.
To be completely honest, I didn’t like that gamejam. A lot of people didn’t know what they were doing, people were stressing each other out, and some people didn’t have enough work, or straight up just didn’t do their work in one case. I felt like I could’ve done a lot more, a lot more efficiently, but that ship has sailed. The main problems that afflicted this team was that not many people, outside of when Savannah was directly telling them to, had any idea what to do, there was a lot of miscommunication, and the vague start started us off on the wrong foot, which I don’t think we recovered from. These are my personal opinions, so they will likely be biased and wrong, but I felt like Savannah was overbearing and stress inducing throughout the project, Eric did the bare minimum he could, and during the gamejam mentioned that instead of doing work, they were playing animal crossing, Siarra was pretty much only able to do work on the last couple days since she busted through work the first few, Huy tried, but didn’t have enough work going for them, Noam needs to learn photoshop a bit more cause it caused stress in Savannah, and then in turn, me, as a result, and I felt like I didn’t do anything and was antagonistic and stubborn for no good reason. I talked to my team members to ask what they thought of me during the project, and they had different opinions, but I still feel like I was like this.
As for what happened during the week after, honestly, it was a lot of design work and trying to get some basic art assets out for TechnoTowers, wince we brought Drew onboard, and he immediately showed his capabilities as an artist, which pushed Riley to do better, so that leaves me either making basic props that are going to be replaced, or doing design work, where I fell I am much more useful. With design, we discussed some of the issues involving game progression, different tower types, pathing for enemies, and new relics, amongst other things. Starting off with game progression, the way we agreed to keep going about it was to have relics carry over, as we agreed earlier on, in addition to adding towers that affect other towers beneficially with them being able to affect other towers nearby without being able to do any damage themselves while also taking up a large amount of space. As for pathing with enemies, we discovered an issue where if the same path has part of it that clips off screen when the screen isn’t fully zoomed out, enemies will not spawn on that path, so we agreed that in future iterations of the map that there wont be paths bisected by the edge of the screen to prevent this issue moving forward. And last, but not least, relics. To start things off, Liam and I sat down and described what the player was in control of, what what they aren’t in control of. From there, we listed over everything the player has some control of, but not entirely, and discussed some possibilities for how these things the player controls could be used, or how we could potentially shift what the player doesn’t control in a pseudo control, or complete control.
As for this week, we just got back into the swing of things, so not much is happening since a lot of design work needs to be done today, and yesterday was an art meeting. That being said, I quite enjoyed yesterday’s art meeting due to the content of it involving me thinking a lot about composition in both mine, and everyone else’s work. I tend to rush my drawings as soon as I have a basic idea for them done, and it shows due to some of the conflicts that result in what I draw.
I drew this over break, and got a lot of feedback that makes sense given the context and reasoning behind them. To start off, I drew a butter knife, which was me being not too aware of the reference I was using, and I didn’t realize it until it was brought up. Second, the fork is a bit too crooked, and the end of it looks too inconsistent for my likings. Third is that it’s a bit difficult to tell what is being carved into, with the main suggestion from Compton being that I add veins to the heart itself so that it’s more telling as to what it is, in addition to closing off the aorta and pulmonary artery and vein before it touches the edge of the drawing because it creates tension. Another issue that I personally had is that the ventricle doesn’t read well, so adding a bit of reflection along the length of that would hopefully do wonders. In addition to this, the thumb on the right hand doesn’t read right due to the tip of it not being entirely visible. Another issue with it is that the index finger on the right hand doesn’t look like it is applying pressure to the knife, which Compton suggested could be resolved by curving the tip and arching the rest of the finger. As for the left hand, it would look better if it was moved closer inwards to the knife, and with a bit of editing after the fact, it does look better. These small things build up, and with the suggestions mentioned, I definitely see the value in taking more time with my compositions moving forward.
With a bit of choppy editing, It really shows how the small improvements help with the piece as a whole after, even with the small addition of accidently defining the atrium more helps immensely. The eye is much more drawn from the hands to the heart with the fork closer, and the ventricle reads better, but still could use those veins as Compton mentioned, and with the end of the aorta and pulmonary vein and artery being visible.
Outside of this, Compton is suggesting that I look into more historical artists, and try to learn from them, so I am doing some research on the Pre-Raphaelites, Borsch, and Tintoretto, amongst many others, and how those style can be interpreted and changed by looking at artists that I know.
tdlr; Design work is just a bunch of disagreements until something sticks, composition is important and I should slow down, and I really like drawing anatomy.
