Introduction

This is the weekly Blog covering Assignment 1 for the class “Animation For Creative Industry” during the 2nd half of the 2nd year of the Ulster University Animation Course.

For this Assignment, I will be put into a team (created using students from both the Animation and Game design class) and together we are to create a video game prototype. This Prototype will have a working gameplay style, a defined art direction, a sound scape (could be handle by the Sound Design and Audio students), well created animations and high quality models and assets (3D or 2D).

This assignment is to be completed by the 5th of May (2022) with the following summited to Blackboard:

The Final Game Prototype
Portfolio
Blog
Team Assessment Form
Software Files

Hyperlink to the Assignment information:

(https://learning.ulster.ac.uk/webapps/blackboard/content/listContent.jsp?course_id=_323298_1&content_id=_6449495_1)

First Class

For the first Class of the 2nd half of the year, our tutors covered the remaining assignments for the rest of the year for both classes (Animation for Creative Industry and Animation Discourse). I will only be covering the 1st assignment for Creative Industry here, as it the only one relative to these blog pages (see introduction for the Assignment task).

Second Class

During the 2nd half of todays class, I was put into my first team and we started to work on the core of the new project. The members of this team were:

Nathan Martin
Simas Alburtis
Josh Davidson
Tori Gray
Scott (surname unknown yet)
Cain Henderson
DevHunter (only know him by Discord’s Nametag)

This team was cool and I even got the role of Lead Art and Model design. However despite the role and the ideas we came up with, It would not last as explained down below.

Rest of the Week

Before I could start any of the work at home, a problem occurred. Due to a side program removing students from their courses, many of the teams including the one I was in, were reshuffled. This lead to me be put into an already formed team and, whilst I do like the new team and was cool with the project they had come up with, I lost the key roll of Art and Design Lead and a project I had a hand in creating during the core idea phase was lost. This does make me feel as if I was working for another company’s game instead of being one of the creators of the concept, I had no input into it at the beginning.

The new team was made of:

Nathan Martin
Holly Boyle
Jamie Stewart
Aaron Lynch (Team Leader)
Chloe Bowman
Faolan McKeown
Owen
Letitia Liggett (Tish for short)
Una MacIver

We had a team meeting on Thursday, which helped catch everyone up on the project so far and to hand out all the new jobs. Because it was only the first week, I was tasked with creating the Wolf Statue for the demo concept room the following week. The Demo Concept Room is use to prove that our game design can work in practice or identify if we need to rework some elements.

I used Maya to make a quick 3D model in order to add some color and textures and show more of my thinking and design theory, before taking it further.

It is a very rushed model but it is only a test and a better one will be made during production.