BA3b - Week 1 Summary

BA3b - Week 1 Summary

This week we were given our BA3b brief, with instructions and requirements provided by the university below.

'You will take forward the ideas and content developed in BA3a using all knowledge and skills acquired to date to fully realise the proposed outcome(s). You will also consider how your work can be best publicly communicated by developing the work for display at the NUA undergraduate exhibition. Guidelines for the exhibition process will be articulated by the course team in due course.'

BA3a feedback

I am pleased to say that I received a first for this unit. It's a nice boost to my confidence that I am taking the right approach for this pirate cove which I am now very excited to take to another level in BA3b. The feedback I received was mostly aimed towards the smaller tasks, however I did receive some critique regarding my object placement which I hope to improve in this brief.

What's next?

What I plan to do first with my pirate cove is to enhance the parts that I felt were a bit rushed for the last hand in. I need to replace bits such as the Mud texture and also will be creating another sand texture to increase the variation of the ground.

Professional Practice

Since this is our last couple of months before we graduate, I will be spending a lot of time searching/applying for various jobs within the games industry. I will mainly be applying for positions such as Intern/Junior Environment Artist roles but might apply for others as well if I feel I meet the requirements.

The jobs I have applied for so far are the following:

Rare LTD - Environment Artist Intern

Supermassive Games - Junior Environment Artist

Splash Damage - Enviroment Artist Intern

Sumo Digital - Art Intern

Ubisoft (London) - Junior Environment Artist

Ubisoft (Reflections) - Environment Artist Intern

BA3a - Week 16 Summary

BA3a - Week 16 Summary

This is the last week before hand in of this project so I will start off this blog post with a video showing off the current state of the environment.

Self Evaluation

This project have definitely been the most stressful one so far (considering it's the first project I also had a weekend job) but it has been a great project at the same time due to us being able to work with what we are truly passionate about. Having the tasks while working on our studio practice was great because it allowed me to create many new pieces for my portfolio, speaking of which I feel like this project have made me ready to apply for internships / junior environment artist positions in the industry because now I have a portfolio with recent work which I am proud of. 

I am very pleased with where I am with my pirate cove, I feel like the approach i took to create it with the aim of feeling like a Skyrim dungeon have paid off and it really starts feeling like a proper game environment. It's always a joy to open up Unreal Engine and know that by the end of the day something will change in the environment that will improve it. I am also very excited to start adding props because it's been difficult to not start working on assets because that's where most of the pirate feel will come, right now it's mostly just a tropical cave. However, I am still glad that I did the limitation for myself of just focusing on the environment itself for now because or else there would be too much to focus on at the same time. I feel like by continuing the same approach I am going now the end result will become really good and definitely be the centre piece of my portfolio when applying to jobs in the industry.

As mentioned earlier I feel like this have been a very stressful time and at some parts it shows. Especially the fact that I only created 4 rocks and already started working on the cave. I feel like some more love on them could be good and I am considering going back to polish on the old rocks while also add more of them. I also think I spent too much of my focus on the tasks this project rather than the creative project which i both regret and not a the same time since as i mentioned in my positives, now i have many new portfolio pieces but more research and planning could have been done for my pirate cove. 

Going forward since we now don't have the tasks and research report to write I will hopefully be less stressed and be able to focus all my effort on creating the pirate cove. I will put more effort into writing the story of the cave and come up with the various interesting areas I should create to enhance the storytelling of the environment. I do believe I am at a great spot now with the pirate cove however that I know which direction I am going, now I just need to keep adding more to it and improve. The worst is having an empty scene and not knowing where to go, I now have a clear direction and I am very excited to keep building on this scene for next unit!

BA3a - Week 13-15 Summary

BA3a - Week 13-15 Summary

These 3 weeks were the Christmas holiday and I had to travel back home to Sweden without access to my computer so I were unable to progress on my pirate cove, I did finish most of my research report however. I also had to work full time at my work which heavily impacted my time available to focus on studies.