Masters Project - Week 05 / 25th - 31st July.

Week Hour Breakdown:

Wednesday - July 25th - Six Hours & Forty Three Minutes - Created Marmoset scene + mockup lighting. More texture work on the camera. Created red and blue variations for alert states.

Thursday - July 26th - Six Hours - Viva PowerPoint creation, Background and layout set. Slide planning. First six pages accomplished.

Friday - July 27th - One Hour & Forty One Minutes - Another set of slides accomplished.

Saturday - July 28th - Six Hours & Thirty Two Minutes - New references, Growth screens, main image, camera asset, camera angles, personal reflection, time keeping, contingency and plan ahead slides accomplished. Created milestone 11/12/13 and spare on the Hack'N'Plan.

Sunday - July 29th - Nine Hours - Finished remaining slides, polish, practise. Finished texturing camera asset.

Monday - July 30th - Fifteen Minutes - Viva Presentation

Tuesday - July 31st - NA - NA

Total time spent this week - 30 Hours and 11 Minutes.

Overview:

As expected at the end of the prior week, the days for this weeks entry were all based around the preparation for the upcoming Viva Presentation which is worth 40% in total of the marks for this module. Considering how much of the marks rest on this, is why the week before and this week, I tailored my approach to maximising the marks available to me. Most of the entries this week consist of PowerPoint slide creation, and gathering the relevant information or screenshots from the files I have stored on my hard drive.

Wednesday / July 25th :

Eventually I was going to have to create a Marmoset scene to display my environment in. I needed to have a scene ready by the end of the project obviously, but I also thought that displaying the blockout in Marmoset would also be more beneficial for the presentation to show that I have one prepared. I also wanted to get the scene in Marmoset so that I could place some lights in the environment to make sure I had enough light emitting objects and that the placement was where I needed them to be. For the sake of the speed, I made sure to bring in the blockout as one whole object, so that I could apply a single texture to it and just focus on light placement and colour. This also allowed me to make changes later on with asset placement if I found that all of the light emitting objects were bundled together. My first pass on the lighting was messy, although the purpose what was mentioned prior, light placement, possible colours, and more importantly the atmosphere that I could focus in on.

Once this was accomplished, I decided to work into the camera texture a little more, making sure to decide upon the kind of display I wanted to have. I already knew that I wanted a hexagon patterned screen , but I wanted to solidify the design of the eye on the screen. I had a drawing of how I wanted the eye to be, but I needed to figure out a way to display the design in two modes, calm and alert. The drawing I had displayed a simple hexagon eye, with exclamation points for eyelashes. Creating a version of this for the calm version was here I had a few attempts. For the presentation I wanted to display the two texture variations, so I saved out the current file, and started editing the colours and eye on the display. This would help to fill out the slide displaying the asset, and also better display how I wanted to asset to function from a narrative standpoint.

Thursday / July 26th :

I decided to start working on the PowerPoint for the viva presentation, even though I still had a bundle of days left. My thought process was that there would be some slides that I decide to create that would form their own extra tasks. I knew there were things I would be forgetting and would rather have the extra days to cover that ground. An example that I know in advance would be creating a timeline / plan for the coming weeks, and I could have easily forgot to do that. But by going through creating slides earlier rather than later, I would eventually be reminded when I come to that portion of the marking criteria.

I started by viewing the marking criteria to check what kind of things needed to be covered, alongside some notes I wrote down during a tutor discussing the Viva with the students. Thsi then lead to be trying to write down what information needed to be covered, and in turn allowed me to understand what different slides I should involve. The last step was me writing the slides in the order I believe they would best be displayed in, allowing my presentation to flow from one point to the next rather than just abruptly switching topic.

I focused on creating a background that could be used between all of the slides, I originally went with something that was much more dominant in the background, and this caused the issue of anything placed upon the top of it would be fighting for focus. I eventually settled on a simple hexagon pattern that would only be partially noticeable by using a tonal variation of the base background colour. Normally, in prior presentations I would create something elaborate like an attempt at drawing a scroll for the background with some shadows with just simple base colours and a subtle overlay to add texture. But looking back on most of the presentation they look quite tacky, so this time round I opted to try display the information in a different manner. I planned out the first six pages of the presentation, making sure the information relevant was on each slide regardless of if the English was incorrect or the imagery was missing. The focus was to make sure I wasn't forgetting to cover any relevant information, and the polish of the slides could come at a later date.

Friday / July 27th :

I continued onward with the slide creation, and gathered the relevant information for the Early scene direction slide, Early scene positives slide and research reboot slide. These didn't take long to accomplish considering I had saved some of the older files as separate max files, allowing me to open them and take relevant screenshots comfortably. There were a number of screenshots already available to use from updating the prior entries on this blog too.

Saturday / July 28th :

The remainder of the slides for the presentation were finished off during the course of this day. This included the Scene theme reference, Scene iteration growth, Blockout / key area showcase, lighting / camera mockup, Security camera asset, Overall / Direction reflection, Planning / Timekeeping reflection, Contingency plans, The plan ahead and end slides. An example of what I mentioned before hand came to pass, while taking the image for the Lighting mockup, I thought to myself about how to display the image of the lights. This in turn made me remember to place some cameras about the scene and display the kind of screenshot angles I plan to take when the environment is in an accomplished state.

Also, in creating "The plan ahead" slide I needed to display how I had gone about thinking about how to approach the next few weeks of work. This also reminded me that I needed to update my Hack'N'Plan future milestones so that I could display my thought process for the presentation. This is where I create milestones 11,12 and 13, along with the untasked milestone tab. This helped me to understand where I needed to place my efforts over the next few weeks, but also covered a huge portion of one of the marking criteria zones.

Sunday / July 29th :

I spent the start of this day reading through the slides from start to finish and noting down any issues in the text, missing information, break of flow and more. This allowed me to efficiently polish the slides up and make sure that they made sense when displaying. I also rehearsed the slides a handful of times to make sure I could feasibly present what I had in the time available. This caused me to remove displaying the music that was relevant to the project, and one or two minor points, but this brought the presentation down to an average of 10 minutes and 30 seconds, with the goal being about 10 minutes. I then at the end of the day before bringing all the slides together into a PowerPoint decided to add a little more colour to the Camera asset, and then render them properly just to make them view better on the slide. I added some purple stripes around the asset to break up the consistent grey / white metal. I still planned to come back to the asset once I had practised more, but the current state of the asset displayed what I was aiming for.

Monday / July 30th :

I presented my Viva in the morning slot with around 4 other students. I was the second one up, at around 10AM. In reflection to what I presented, I was confident that I had covered all of the grounds that I could have on the marking criteria with what I had. I understood that I would get some marks lost to the actual progress of my project, but I did make sure to display my prior environment, along with reasons as to why I decided to start again for context. Other than that though, I felt as though I had accomplished most areas with a fairly in depth explanation. Although, I was aware that last time I had a viva, I crammed so much information into one PowerPoint that I ended up speaking very fast to make sure I kept within the time limit and this was brought up by the tutors. I did this once again, as I valued explaining the information more worthwhile than speaking at a slower pace. I attempted to avoid this, but naturally I started increasing the pace throughout the course of the presentation. The feedback on the spot was positive and helpful, the tutors stated that as always I had a very informative presentation, and that I was clear and presented well. The tutors obviously brought up the progress as an issue, but also understood that I had addressed this when presenting the reflection portion. One tutor explained that the slides were so jam packed with text and images, that for viewers it was hard to follow because of all the information. So he advised to better use negative space next time I create a PowerPoint. Apart from those, they mentioned some direction for me, such as advising I look at some other creators on Art station such as ZugZug studios and use their work as reference, and mentioned one or two portions of the PowerPoint that they found interesting, mainly in my planning and reflection portions.

Week Conclusion:

This week felt pretty good to work through, as I felt as though I was making a lot of progress. Although obviously nerve wracking because of how behind I was in comparison to where I could have been if I hadn't started the project again, seeing everything come together ready to be handed in and displayed was exciting. I'm relieved that the presentation is out of the way, and that the end of the project is drawing in. I'm really enjoying working on the scene that I'm making, but after a year of back to back deadlines that blend together, I'm looking forward to a bit of mental clarity where the pressure is off for a short time. I understand that I'm probably not going to get this scene finished to the standard I want before the deadline, but I also understand that regardless of how much I get finished I'm going to improve for it anyway as long as I'm legitimately trying to finish it.

-RyanHarleeJones