Week 1: A long summer break, a stressful start!

Warning: Long post ahead!

Summer? Time flies by!

First of all, I need to apologise for not having posted anything on this blog in such a long time. I was originally going to make another post at the end of last year to summarise my experience of my first year at university, however there was quite a bit of an up and down motion in my personal life which ultimately prohibited me from taking my time to write another post and even the summer break flew by in a fortnight so I wasn't able to get a post out during that time either.

So, to do a very quick summary, my first year was a success! Not a massive success, but a success nonetheless. I had a lot of personal problems after the first few weeks of university, which have greatly affected how well I did during my first year. I eventually managed to get a grip and started catching up closer towards the end of the year and while I barely managed to pass, it is nothing to be too proud of, as I had the potential to do so much better!

Having learned from my previous experience I have set myself to do a lot better this year though, especially because this year will go towards my final grade so this is where it really counts. One of the first things I wanted to do was use this blog more often. I said to myself to write a blog post at least once a week before I started university and as it turns out, I have now found out in the first week, that we are actually required to do so anyway for the second year. Fantastic! So with that, I hope that you are looking forward to receiving regular updates from now on and I will begin with the first week!

Back to University. What does that mean?

Well, it certainly doesn't mean we get time to slowly ease ourselves back into work. I clearly should've done some work over the summer and this had shown when we came back to university and started doing some drawings around Leicester before the first week of term. I was shocked to see that I had gotten quite badly out of practice and all the progress I had made last year seemed to have disappeared.

This changed however once we started our first week. Straight away we got pushed into groups and got set an exciting little project: AssetSwap, The aim of this project was to come into a group of 6 people (we only had 5 because there wasn't enough people in our class) and then model a simple scene. To do so we had to assign each person with an different asset that was part of the scene and start by sketching down a very simple concept of said asset. We then passed on the concept to the next person, which then had to be modelled from that concept. Then the model got passed on again to let the next person do the unwrap and finally it got passed on for the texturing. In the end each person of the group got to work on a single stage for each asset within the scene, with the fifth and final stage being feedback on the texturing.

Here is a little picture of our final scene:

I am quite happy with the final scene and with my own work for that matter. My weak point had always been texturing but I got to work on the textures for the tankard, plate and cutlery and decided to hand-paint them. This was my first time hand-painting textures and I think it turned out really well. During my feedback I was asked to add some screws onto the tankard which weren't on the original concept, which I then did as well.

All in all I personally enjoyed this project a lot and I was happy to have been assigned to a very organised and motivated group. We all had our concepts done within the first lesson and also set up a Facebook group to easily share files and ideas with each other. In time for Friday we had successfully managed to get the whole scene fully modelled, textured and put into Unreal Engine 4 and do some final adjustments, which is great, because another one of my "resolutions" for this year was that I wanted to get work done by the beginning of the weekend so that I would have some time to relax as well. However, this little project was not the end...

Stressful Interruptions.

Turns out the AssetSwap project was just a simple filler to give us something to do for our game production sessions within the first week. The course had been re-designed and they now had projects covering all 3 modules, so that our visual design sessions would be linked in with game production and ultimately critical studies. The way this would work is that we get set a project in visual design and then have a week to start concepting ideas and start creating those concepts within game production in the week after. Our timetable was laid out so that we have visual design on Tuesday and game production on Monday, so by the time we got to Tuesday we got to know our first "real" project.

This project is known as the FilmRoom project and requires us again to come together in a group and model an interior scene from a movie. This time however, it didn't go quite as smoothly as with the AssetSwap project. Instead of being assigned to groups we were being given the opportunity to choose our own group, which while it sounds nice, turned out to be the only thing that put me off my great start into the course!

The issues with grouping...

After we had our lecture about what we had to do people started grouping and because there was a clear set limit on people in the group (which later on turned out to be a bit more flexible), groups formed quickly and I was left with no group to join, The main problem with this was not just, that we had to choose groups ourselves (if we had been assigned groups there wouldn't have been a problem for me), but also that we were asked to choose people for our group that are in the same classes as us. Now a slight note, which I already mentioned earlier: The groups this year are small, in fact about half the size of last year’s groups. This was done deliberately to provide each student more time with their tutor during the lesson, which is great! However, it did meant for me that I wasn't able to find a group, so I even went further and started asking friends who were in different classes, but I ultimately got turned down and was left without a group.

I was a bit lost, but soon decided to make a start myself and get in some ideas of what I could do for this project. Luckily, 2 days later we then had our first critical studies session, in which I was then assigned a group with other people who couldn't find one. At the same time everyone had received a bit of a beating (not literally) about their ideas for this project. Many people chose to do the same boring scenes and ultimately we were told to choose something more interesting! So what defines interesting? Everything! The colour palette, the lightning, the objects within the scene... many of us had opted in to do a boring interior which is dark and mostly had a green and brown colour palette (including myself). So in the end many of us had to go back to the drawing board and find something more interesting. This had caused a lot of stress within the groups.

... and the problems of miscommunication.

Personally, I wasn't too moved by it, since I hadn't done a lot yet myself, because I wasn't part of a group, but there was several groups which had already gone as far as choosing a scene and were ready to start concepting down everything and it came as a bit of a shock when they realised that they had to start over again. Another confusion that set back a few people was the fact that there was a bit of miscommunication and we were told that we could change the scenes (change the camera perspective and lightning, etc.) to make it more interesting, however as it turns out this is not an imagining exercise and the brief is to just simply copy the scene as it is. This is done to make the project not too complex, as it is only 3 weeks long. The main focus of this project is also on working as a team rather than the work itself.

The stress form other groups had a bit of an effect on myself as well, but as we're slowly heading towards the weekend now people seem to start getting calmer, which is a great relief.

Looking ahead!

All in all this week was a bit stressful, but I really do hope that it will slowly get better the further we progress and get used to all the changes within the course. I am looking forward to what the second year of the course will bring to me and ready to take on the challenge. I will aim to get my weekly post out by Saturday, but ultimately start writing on Friday, so stay tuned!~