Reflection

Going into this assignment I was excited to do another character design but I was also worried that I would have to relearn a lot from last year as well as keeping up with new class content. This turned out to be the case and of course being sick for about a month made matters much worse. I enjoyed the character design classes and the process of researching and designing my character, though I would have liked to have been able to spend more time looking into other artists, their methodologies in character creation and pipelines in the industry. If I could do this assignment again I would also want to exaggerate my character design more whether that was through the sympathetic and sickly route I originally had in mind or the more monstrous and scary  one I considered later. As a result my character is quite simple and doesn’t have as clear a narrative purpose as it could have had. If I hadn’t lost so much time to being ill I could have added more details that would have helped visually tell the character’s story. I still really like the character design I made and want to make more art of Dobhar Chú in my free time as Celtic mythology and environmental issues are something I want to explore more in general in my creative projects.

During modelling I found myself slow to remember things that I felt should be basic to me by now in order to keep up with new assignments. To some degree this got easier over the course of the assignment but generally  I had to refer back to the first year class content throughout the process. Sculpting on the other hand felt more straightforward once I had fixed the initial problem I had with my cursor. Overall I think I did okay at making my model in a short time to try and catch up but if I could do it again I would want to make it more functional, for example by making the mouth able to open.

I found Substance much easier during this assignment as previously I had had a lot of issues last year with UV maps overlapping and making it hard to paint details onto my character. This time the only thing I would want to change is that the colours looked less blended together after exporting out of Substance but I didn’t have time to go back and try to blend them further. Additionally, the eyes don’t look how I wanted them to much at all. I’m not sure how I would have fixed this as I am used to thinking 2 dimensionally about where to place highlights in eyes whereas with 3D I can only make them shiny and hope for the best.

This assignment was my first encounter with Unreal Engine and I wouldn’t mind if it was the last. I still managed to get done what I needed to do in time but it was at no point straightforward or satisfying.  This is more an attitude problem than a problem with Unreal Engine as I have always been impatient with learning new software that isn’t intuitive. Despite this I found the free resources on Fab were great, with a lot to choose from and much easier to import than from Blender. If I did this assignment again I would really want to make the lighting and the water in my scene look better, especially since a body of water is an integral part of Dobhar Chú’s habitat.

Now that I have completed this assignment I can say that it turned out much better than I had previously worried. Thanks to a very generous extension I’ve been able to complete this project to about the same standard as I think I would have if I had not been ill earlier this year. Aside from the first couple weeks of character designing I can’t say I much enjoyed this assignment. As much as I value the opportunity to learn these skills in higher education I honestly would not have chosen this degree if I had gotten to try any 3D in my foundation year. But I am here now and although I feel I complain a lot in my blog, reflections especially, I will persevere not just to finish my degree but to prove to myself if I can conquer my least favourite creative medium I should be ready for anything in my career.