Project Evaluations

Character Design

In the character design we had to concept a character. I had many decisions as I like coming up with new characters all of the time. Especially friendly, scary or mysterious ones. After creating a couple of mind maps I decided to choose a character I had already came up with, as I wanted to further develop him to a more professional standard. I had options from choosing my Anthropomorphic character Erika Fox, Koah from my tribe the Teche-Koah. and others. I finally went with my first Original character Silly Cup.

I chose this option after discussing my other options with my parents. before we broke up for the holidays I we were given a piece of paper which told me that I had to come up with a character, their backstory, a set of development sheets including pose and expression.

at the start of the module I told my character's backstory, presented my first initial sketches of Silly Cup to both tutors but they couldn't relate to him. learning some skills as the project progressed, I did some more development on Silly Cup. I already came up with his character and his origin, with the help of my parents. What made this project difficult was after getting that kind of feedback from the tutors I couldn't work my mind was blank and I felt very depressed.

Pushing on I decided I did too much work to let it all go away for nothing. I already came up with a bunch of new characters however I wanted to make a professional character model sheet of Silly Cup.

Another thing that was giving me a harder time to complete was coming up with a convincing backstory this was because at the time I was already fleshing out 3 different characters from different styles. Erkia Fox, Arthur Brushwell etc. I wanted to show the tutors I had more than one idea to fall back upon. However If I chose to develop any of my other characters it would have taken me twice as much time as it did to flesh out their appearance, movement and personality.

I used a new workflow when It came to creating my characters development sheets and final model sheet. I now use this workflow in my current projects. I would draw out my initial idea on a piece of A4 paper using a soft HB then using my Light Pad I would trace over the top adding my own  style.

Upon drawing with a soft pencil I found out the Scanner didn't pick up all of the line work so I used a harder HB. Although the the scanner picked up the line work I was not happy with the results. Finally redrawing the same images about 3-4 times I used a un-branded hand writing pen which gave me the professional look I wanted. I called this stage the Clean up as I was refining the the sketch for scanning.

I used Photoshop to color my sketches in and used Illustrator as a final line work fix.

Overall The project started slow was depressing at first but I persevered and came up with a professional outcome which I am happy for. I also now have the known knowledge to flesh out some of my other character or come up with complete new ones!

Possibly a way that could help me is to come up with 4 ideas create short backstories and choose one character to develop.

I thought I would further develop my

Environment Design

What did you do?
For this module I produced a final level design sheet along with supporting development. I did some further research into games that had a similar style and game play to which I wanted to achieve.

How do you feel it went?
From the start the module went OK I created a series of concepts in which I chose one to further develop into my final piece. However like My Character design module It felt very short. I felt like I had started to rush my work to get it in. A feeling no one wants to have if I don't say so myself. Because of the quick deadline I felt like I didn't do my very best, however I stuck in and got through it.

what went well and what went not so well?
oddly enough the research went well. I felt like I could have done more however that's because I am passionate about this game concept. If allocated more time I would have done a A2 Level design sheet showing both a Mario inspired level design platform along with Ray man Origins imaginary world.

The Timing felt short maybe it was me not prioritizing my tasks correctly but I felt rushed doing everything. In my opinion I feel like it's not my best work, however in the future I will revisit this module in my own time and recreate the world of Cup Craft.

what skills did you learn? from your experience?
These are the skills I learned in this module

•  I learned how to make custom brushes using Photoshop.
• How to adapt a custom workflow and develop upon it
• I learned how to make a concise sheet of terrain assets.

How will you plan to develop from this point?

• Timing problems could be improved if I set myself my own deadline before the actual one.
• I feel that I need to quicken my research skills in order to get more practice work done. to do this I could look into tutorials or ask for advise from either my tutors, peers or parents.
• Although not shown within development I did create some custom stylized rock brushes I plan to use these to speed up my workflow when using revisiting this project in my own time.

Games Simulation

In this project produced a 3D, 2D Mixed game simulation. I learned about game engines and what they are used for in the industry. Continuing with the my unique cartoon style I created packs of assets for different biomes. This included different types of plants, animals and minerals. I came up with a traditional to digital workflow that works best for me.


To start with things did not go as well as I planned. This was due to my concept changing drastically throughout the module. I believe the reason for this was because at the time I had bought and downloaded a set of new games via the PC gaming platform Steam. However most of the games I was playing were relevant to my module as my game simulation concept was a survival based game.


I created a series of assets which I could either further develop or use as actual development artwork for my game. I could add this to my portfolio showing I have knowledge of creating game assets.

What went bad was having my original concept changed so much it didn't feel like my own idea anymore. I was trying to think outside of the box. I knew that most of my peers were all doing 3D, however I did not want to do 3D in my mind I wanted things to be simple, I thought logically doing a 2D side scroller would be just the ticket. However early in the project i too wanted to have a crack at building a 3D level. I believe I did this because I didn't feel confident about using the new software at the time. That and the games I have been playing warped my original concept.

Skills I learned are as following

• learning how to navigate around a new software's interface
• Coming up with my own workflow
• Learning how to make sure that I measure each 3D object to Unreal Engines Units.
• How to come up with modular Design
• Learning how to use a new node coding / programming language.
• Decision making - learning to choose and discard anything that would be too time consuming and or difficult to produce at my current skills level.
• Creating a Seamless texture
• learning how to unwrap both simple and complex objects

I plan to improve by doing the following.

• look at tutorials regarding UDK 4's interface (Unreal Engine 4)
• Continue to develop my workflows to get the job done quicker by breaking the tasks down into easier manageable chunks.
• Instead of using sliders I will input numbers of 2,5 and 10s
• I will look at more tutorials regarding UDK4s Node based scripting language.
• I will either do an even number of concepts and then pick one to further develop getting feedback from both my tutors, peers and family members.

For most of these modules I was set to a short deadline however In the future I will revisit this project and build upon each to come up with a successful game idea. I will get better at speeding my workflow, learn to take for feedback, find useful tips and tricks using tutorials and continue to draw everyday to better and challenge my current skills.