Our project for this semester was based on the concept of ‘Unstable’ and had to portray something along those lines. It was known as ‘Race Against Time’ and was originally about an insane mad scientist who sent his worker to different time zones to gather data. There were originally at least three different time zones, and I had made a concept for an Imperial China one, and many different characters, but they were all scrapped. and the story was later changed so that we were simply a renegade on the run from time cops as we jump between the distant future and the medieval past. A lot of the work that I was responsible for was in low-poly 3D Modelling in Blender and exporting then as FBX files for use in Unreal Engine, with any textures made in Photoshop and then exported as PNGs. I also did several 2D Animations in Toon Boom Harmony, creating Backgrounds and assets in Photoshop, where applicable, and then added finishing touches and extra effects in After Effects. I also learned of interesting wall generators what allowed me to make castles and castle walls easily and quickly, and in addition to this, I made super low poly versions of the castles when it was found out they were too high poly for the relatively low poly art style we were looking for.

When it came to researching for the project, I mostly looked at games such as Cyberpunk 2077 and New Yoke City from Sonic Prime, and Movies such as Blade Runner 2046 for sources of inspiration, and for the Autumn level I mostly looked at autumn forest references and also looked at Ni No Kuni. I also gave out possible inspirations for our game, such as 2 Fast 4 Gnomz, and laid out possible ideas for our game, such as power downs that hinder how you play from the SNES Game Kid Klown in Crazy Chase, as well as laid down numerous concepts for characters that sadly went unused, and getting images of Bing of red brick Victorian buildings for a scrapped Victorian level. I also drew up potential power ups for the game, such as a cola for the future chapter and a wine glass for the Medieval level. We as a group also looked at Crash Bandicoot 4, Persona 5, Comic Jumper and Sly Cooper for sources of inspiration, especially for the comic book art style.

I worked very hard on providing for my other peers in my group project this semester, making several models for both the future and past levels as well as trying out Unreal Engine again for the project as well. I often went to Aaron for help with sorting out certain stuff with uploading to Github and also received help from Zakk when retexturing my models to have the correct textures. Zakk taught me how to create new materials that used unique textures that I could use for my models, and Aaron made a new file in Github that all the files I made can be put into. We would have infrequent calls in the run up to the final deadline, some were for all of us but there was also one that focused only on the game design students, rather than the animation. In addition, some calls were planned but due to a shortage of participants they were quickly scrapped, and we settled to simply write up our updates instead. Making a game project was something that I never really touched upon before, so this was a new learning experience for me to utilise the skills I learned in Unreal Engine to help out the others in my group. I was the only girl in the group, so this was also the chance for me to make new friends other than the ones already in my group.

I used my skills I’ve utilised in Toon Boom Harmony to create several animations for use in the futuristic chapter. I also took up After Effects, which I largely ignored after using it back at the Belfast Met, to chroma key the greenscreen used for the Toon Boom Harmony files, and add backgrounds to make the final product look a little better. When it came to making the models for the project, I researched Cyberpunk 2077 and New Yoke City from Sonic Prime to help me out with making the models, but once we got a finalised style down I settled for following the mock up one of the members of my group had created. I also created several unused concepts for the project, such as a conceptual Chinese chapter as well as art for a timid astronaut, a swole superhero, and giant holographic women. I also made art pieces for concepts that were used, such as an autumn forest and a futuristic dystopian city in Winter.

I mainly contributed to the project by way of making models such as low poly trees, and I learned some interesting techniques, such as merging a cube into a single vertex and extruded it to make the framework of a tree, and then used the skin modifier to create a mesh of a tree trunk. I also looked at several tutorials on how to make different models, such as a stall, a Barrel, several medieval crates as well as futuristic buildings and billboards and barriers, and found some interesting generators, such as one to create castle walls, that bypass manual creation of the walls, and another that allows to generate snow to cap off selected geometry faces, though the results were often to high poly to be of use, as we were focusing on a more low poly approach. All the models, along with simple snow and leaf piles, were created in Blender using simple primitives such as icosahedrons, cubes and cylinders and cones which have been extruded to have bases, and using the skills I inherited during my time at Ulster University, where applicable, I marked seams on each to create UV maps. I created many 2D animations, such as advertisements for Cologne and gust of wind with leaves and snow, in Toon Boom Harmony, and using the green colour card, I chroma keyed in backgrounds for the animations in After Effects.

This was the first time I’ve worked on an actual game with other people, but not the first time I’ve worked on a collaborative project with others. Since I was in the animation class, rather than the game development class, I didn’t have nearly as much experience with Unreal as I would have liked this semester. I also found Github a bit fiddly, and felt that the slightest addition to the project could ruin the whole thing, so the most I did was post whatever I could onto Github and create materials with textures that matched each of the models correctly. All of the textures that I created for the models were done in Photoshop on the UV maps unwrapped in Blender for each model, and then exported as an FBX file to Unreal where the textures are then put on.

I had very little proper knowledge with Unreal before I started collaborating with the others in my group, and the project got to a bit of a slow start at first. The game was in the test stage for a bit longer than other projects of its ilk. However, the game development members of our team were able to swiftly turn things around and move the project fast enough to catch up with how the other projects were developing, and we were able to start constructing the real game. The people I interacted most in the group were Zakk, Aaron and Luke, I mostly came to them for advice on my work.

I had to juggle producing material for my group with exercising, which took up enough of my time to concern me greatly as the deadline approached. I realised that many of my models, some which I made months ago, didn’t have any texturess, and I really wanted to get some of my models looking presentable for my portfolio, so I quickly made textures for many different models. I also had to deal with an essay for my other module, which also took up much of my time. In addition, my laptop is hardly strong enough to properly run Unreal without experiencing slowdown, and that was another problem I had to deal with. In addition, when trying to actually play the game in Unreal, my Laptop crashed when I tried to record footage using OBS studio.

I found drawing out different animations the most fun during game development, as I really wanted to practice 2D Animation while creating content for my other members. I created several 2D animations, a simple horned character bouncing up and down, a model advertising cologne and a cola line, and several 2D effects of a gust blowing leaves and snow around for each level. I applied my knowledge of secondary animation to the characters hair as well as touched up and chroma keyed several of the animations into After Effects So I could place a background into each animation, and then export it as an MP4. Any animations directly exported our of toon boom harmony did not have transparency, and I realised I had to make transparent MOVS of each of the animations I had done through Toon Boom Harmony.

My best works would have to be the Crimbo Cola advertisement and an advertisement for a perfume called Icarus, using an early version of an OC who I plan to use in future content. I used chroma keying to make the animation transparent so that a background can be set over it. I feel I like the Crimbo Cola ad more than I do the Ikarus one, as some of the animation in the Ikarus ad goes by extremely quickly, and I know that in any future animations I make I have to make sure that the animations do not instantly disappear once they’ve finished- If I hold them in place after they finished then they will hold the viewer’s eye for longer without immediately disappearing. Using the skills I learned in Toon Boom  Harmony, and learning how to Chroma key with the software, and then adding additional effects using Photoshop and After Effects were incredibly useful in creating full fledged mim advertisements for the project.

I think I’ve contributed a good bit to my group with the tree models and the animations, even if I still found it difficult to properly focus on the work. Asides from exercising, I also focused a lot on doing an essay on Richard Williams and his impact on Animation, which I had already submitted by this point. I booked a placement for several places in animation, and I hope with my learning experience I can learn to be less distracted from my work to focus on personal art. I also learned a lot about the art style of a comic book, such as characters having bold black lines so that they can stand out from the background, which has thinner, coloured lines. Objects have thinner black lines, but not coloured ones.

I would really like to do something like this again, working alongside other people working on a massive project like a video game. Since coming into University I’ve learned a lot about being able to work with others, coming to them for help with my own work and learning from them. In addition, working alongside students from other classes was also a learning experience for me as their inherited skills could be useful for me when I want to do work in Unreal in my own time. They put any completed models I made into the game so that I could see them in the finished project, and helped me out with how to put materials into Unreal Engine.