The West was too Wild for me

This is the final blog post and write up for my Environment Shop Project. It's probably going to be a long one, as this project has gone wrong in just about every way. This project was a strange one where many of the big points are barely to do with the project itself at all.

First of all this entire project I've been very sick. Multiple visits to the doctors and trying ot multiple different medicines to try and fix whats wrong with me. I don't want to use being sick as a crutch, but when its a mystery illness the doctors dont understand and its slowly progressively getting worse it stresses you out. It's slowed me down a lot and distracted me and hasn't helped for this whole stress problem I've had this week.

First when starting the project up I had no idea what I was doing. I really liked the idea of this project, it sounded fun and like something I could really sink my teeth into and practice things I've not been great at like unwrapping and recently texturing. I quickly decided on exploring the Western style design and it soon evolved into the idea of a hunting shop. I looked up the genre of Weird West where games and movies tweak Western tropes with some weirdness and make it more engaging. So I imagined that this shop was going to be for a game fitting to this genre.

The problem I had at this stage is i just kept on moving. I've realised that I dont listen enough to the feedback from other students. They were telling me that the design wasn't interesting enough and they were definately right. But I thought to focus on something accurate and fitting to Western design but that was stupid, because I got stuck with something that at its base is a fairly boring shape. One of the main things I would focus on if I re did this project would be to reiterate more at this stage and come up with something more interesting. Hopefully realising this might stop me ignoring feedback that helps me.

The actual modelling process was fairly simple. Last project I went far too low poly on my modelling so this project I bumped it up somewhat, which is ironic as I had a much smaller limit. It was one of the things I learnt last project not to limit myself on for no reason. And it did work even for a simple cartoonier project it let me chamfer edges more and give softer shapes when I needed them.

Unwrapping is something that I've always had difficulty in and this project I worked on that. My original unwraps were much nicer but as I started working on Substance Painter I could see my unwrapping in real time. This meant I could slowly fix any issues that came up far easier than in my last projects.

I was really enjoying texturing in Substance Painter. It was somewhat slower than texturing on photoshop but obviously the quality was far higher. More that it was easier to paint something with higher quality with Substance Painters workflow. It was going really well. I was really enjoying using Substance Painter and learning how to use it. I did have difficulties though. At the start of the second week I managed to somehow accidently delete my early texture work. It didn't put me too far back and actually made me focus more on backing up my project.

But that didn't help me. This is where everything really went amasingly wrong at the end of Monday the 9th. At this point I was just finishing off my final parts of my textures. I was really proud of what I had made and I was ready to tweak it and make it all better. I was really happy as the texturing to me made up for the somewhat boring design I had. The universe had different plans. My poor computer had one hell of a melt down, crashing completely. When I managed to get the thing running again (which took some time on its own) all of my substance painter files had corrupted. Both in my project and my back ups. Effectively this meant I had lost all of my texture work. I spent a day trying to somehow salvage the data while trying to have my computer work to no avail. It was a complete and utter period of stress and panic honestly.

These are the best images of what I had before it all got ruined. The file for some reason still thinks it has all this data but will wipe itself clean when you try to look at it. The worst kind of crash a teasing one.

So at that point I decided I had to finish the project. I had to hand in something with textures no matter what. So I got onto texturing a new version of this. This time I used photoshop, as I knew photoshop and could work it much faster. At this time I was completely and utterly stressed. With my computer threatenning to die and trying to catch up with work. This project without a doubt is the most stressful project and the most stressful few weeks I've ever had.

I actually did manage to finish off my texture work in time. I made it a much simpler and much more cartoony style to make this easier on me. I doubt I would of been able to create the same thing as my earlier substance painted textures again with a third of the time. Using photoshop was a good idea as I knew what I was doing and could really bash out quick textures without technical difficulties.

I actually still like what I managed to create. But I'm still annoyed and dissapointed it wasn't the quality as before and cant really have that same polish. For example joints between seams and where objects overlap are messy and those kinds of things. I'm glad I finished the textures in time though I was worried that I wouldn't be able to hand in a finished project. I'm actually fairly happy with the textures I ended up with even though they're fairly rushed. I'm very glad that this is a stylised project because I can some what pick and choose when normals and roughness are necessary. Now the end result I've got seems more like maybe something for a mobile game or something similar. To me it almost seems like I've done this project backwards, ending up with what are basically concept textures where as my first textures were the final.

Now all of that being said am I happy with how this project went? Not really. It easily could of been a more interesting shop front with a more engaging silhoutte and me choosing that is completely my fault. I obviously would of also prefered to hand in my first textures and not have the computer problems that deleted them. There is a realm of possibility that I could of prepared against this but the crash also destroyed my back ups so I'm kind of stuck. A part of Game Art is computer problems honestly. I had a lot of them this project and they messed me up. If they didn't get deleted I maybe could of been able to start making an inside of the building or maybe more environment outside of the shop. This project bad luck and stress hit me hard. I've never really had to work around things this bad before and I'm glad I've come out the other end to be honest. And I've got an end result atleast and managed to make very quick textures with only a few days left looking at the bright side.

All of this has made me think about my FMP and what I want to do in Game Art. I've been having a lot of self doubt recently. After all, these last two projects of my third year have been completely terrible and frankly I know I can do better. I realised in this project that I've been turning away from what I actually enjoy doing and what I'm good at. Since second year I've been interested in Level Design and Engine work. Building the games for the Alice in Wonderland and Container City were not only fun for me but engaging in ways that just building isnt. I could of worked more on that in my New York project but I didn't. I turned away from it. I want to focus on that again, and hopefully my next project I can do that. I also want hopefully to be able to do Level Design for my FMP. I'm not sure exactly what it would be so far, probably a mix of concept and engine work that would be perfect if I work with someone else making the assets for the environment. If not I could always just focus on the other parts and make the actual level very simple. But who knows. For this I need to talk to the tutors and see if theres some way to do that. And I need to start studying level design and getting some books about it. I'm actually pretty excited to do that.

I really hope that for the next project I can make something I'm proud of and something I'd happily include in my portfolio of my best work. But really that's up to me. I need to do better. All of these bad things could of happened in any project however and really it's about how you deal with them. And I did deal with them. Best way to think of it is a big learning experience. I did learn a lot. I learnt how to substance paint, and how to quickly get texture ideas down. I learnt what I want to do in the future, and so much about unwrapping that used to kick me down every time.

#final #GameArt #Shop