Overall, I enjoyed this module as collaborating with another course was very different from what we’ve done before, as we don’t have a complete understanding of what they do and vice versa. So communication between everyone was very important and it was a worthwhile experience to learn more about the production of video games as that’s the industry I hope to work in. It was interesting to learn more about how our art and animation work in tandem with the other areas to create the end product.

I found that the communication between the games design student and the animation students in our group was mostly on the right track, as we talked a lot and everyone was kept generally in the loop about what was going on. The students I worked with from both of the courses were all very nice and easy to talk to and work with, which created a good overall atmosphere for our project. There were times that the communication wasn’t as good, generally on the technical side as the games students would make changes to things and not make this information well known to the whole group, but we got there eventually. It felt a little like there were two groups in the team instead of one, which is understandable as we were working on different stuff but there was a little bit of a divide, which was especially noticeable with the games design students who wanted to do more modelling.

We generally kept everyone updated on the work we had done, with people posting their models as soon as they finished and looking for feedback from everyone else, which helped keep our art style consistent and made the overall game look coherent, which was noted during the playtesting sessions with industry contacts.

I feel like it’s a bit of a shame we didn’t go with the other idea for the game due to being conservative about what we thought we could do as we produced a lot for this project, however, I did enjoy working on this concept as well and it’d be a game I’d be interested in playing. I also wish there had been more overlap/communication between games design and us when it came to the level designing as I found I heavily enjoyed building the environment in the last semester’s project and I would’ve loved to be more involved with making the levels more artistically pleasant/less bare.

I’m happy enough with most of the models I produced during this project, though I truly enjoyed making the animated texture materials within unreal and learning more about VFX type things in it. I had a lot of personal issues during this project that I’ve made known which caused me to fall behind and struggle to be able to finish or start my work. So I’m proud I got as much as I did done, and that it still is mostly up to my standards quality-wise. However, I am nonetheless disappointed by the fact I didn’t do a bit more than I did, as I had ideas I wanted to bring to life and this was a project I truly was interested in and passionate about, as it lies within my areas of interest. I would love to have the opportunity to work on something like this again and will look into opportunities.