In this evaluation, I am going to be writing about all of the work I have done over the past 7 weeks, what I have done and how I can improve. I will also be talking about issues I ran into during this time and how I fixed them and found a workaround for it. During this time I worked with 3 programs, 3Ds Max, Photoshop and construct 2. I have past experience with 3Ds Max & Photoshop but Construct 2 I have never used before the 7 weeks and I struggled with it a lot getting used to the software was not easy for me. 3Ds Max I found easy to jump back into because it has a complex style of things something you don’t forget overtime, photoshop was a little different I had to get used to a lot of the tools again because of new additions to the tools bar due to the newer version. Once I was used to this version it was way easier to use the programs, they both had advanced in different ways adding in more and more new tools. Construct 2 is a hurdle that was hard to get over for me because I am not confident with my 2D work.
At the beginning, we were introduced into the subject of 2D using Photoshop and we started talking about Colour theory and anatomy of humans when drawing them. We used photoshop from the start of college and still use it to this day, the main thing we made in photoshop was our characters for our games and our photobash. The photobash was one of my favourite thing to do in photoshop because I am not very confident in making 2d characters so I was very slow doing that part of the photoshop project. Using things such as planning, sketches, notes and mood broads for inspiration for my character that I was making. After creating my character I began making weapons using shading effects on the weapons to make them stand out, adding depth to the weapons made them stand out more. Using and developing my skills in photoshop was one of the things that have gone really well, I developed a better skill in 2D work and became less shy with my work. It became a lot easier over time and I became more and more confident but still was a little shy.
Construct 2 was a very new thing to me and it was not an easy thing for me to learn because I am not very confident with 2D art, I began working with construct 2 with the view that construct was a more advanced version of scratch with a lot of things added in to make making games easier and more possible to do. Construct 2 was a very bigger hurdle that I had to pass because of the 2D aspect, we started by making a simple platformer making behaviours and just colours blocks as the platforms. The sprites were something we had to make quickly just so we could see how CS2 read the sprites and laid them out so we could understand the program more and more. The project we started with was making a 2d platformer game with the theme of sci-fi. Using a tile sheet we made in photoshop using the dimensions of 32×32 for our grid, allowing us to make the tile sheet which would go over the top of our block out we already made on construct 2. I would have liked to add more detail and make my sprites and coins better quality as well as my player, I would have spent a lot more time on the sprites if I could have.
3Ds Max was something I have a bit of experience, I have used 3Ds max a little before but in an earlier version of the program. I had an easier time using 3Ds max then Construct 2 because I am more confident with it, the skills I learned when we started using 3Ds max where very simple but they allowed us to advance quickly showing that 3Ds Max is not as hard as it looks. The shapes that the software gives you allows you to make anything with very few limits. During our first lesson, we began making a tower out of cubes adjusting sizes and laying them on top of each other, adding in more and more shapes using the tools, resizer tool, rotation tool, and the move tool. We then moved onto making a Box robot called D3rp and used some blueprint we were given to us to follow, during the creation we were shown new tools and techniques we could use to make the parts of D3rp. After a couple of lessons, we finished D3rp and began Unwrapping him so we could add textures to him this was one thing I found hard but have got used to overtime, we did the same thing to a dice and added a texture to the dice. Making the robot was a challenge and adding a texture was also hard to do all of the tools I used before such as Bevel and Extrude which made adding the texture very hard because of the curves and some of the polygons being stretched. I think I prefer working with 3D because I can see the full image of what I am making and when drawing in 2D you cant see the full object just one side of it, I also think its because I can picture the object in my head easier because it is 3D. Later in the project, i began making a ship for my scene using concept art and different view and using the skills I learned from making the robot and learning new things along the creation of the ship, such as using a plane to make one of the wings then using symmetry to add on the other wing.
Throughout the lessons, I tried to answer all the questions I knew and if I did not I still tried to answer with what I thought it was. I made sure to review other work the way I wanted my work to be reviewed and understood and gave leeway where I was able too. The deadlines I tried to always meet making sure all my work was done to my best ability even if I did not want to spend any more time on it I would force myself to finish or improve the work I was doing. I try to push myself so that I can achieve my best during assignments and improve where I can.
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