SKILLS
Over the course of my life and the past 2 years in particular, I have built up several key skills to help me work in the games, VFX and animation sectors. This includes building myself as a person, gaining confidence and building character, as well as learning how to use software specific for the industry.
TEAMWORK
Teamwork is something I've worked on a lot over the past few years. I've always been more of a solo worker but I know that teamwork is essential in large projects and really in all aspects of life so I have been pushing myself to work with others more.
The biggest team work I have taken on to date is the synoptic project I am doing as part of my coursework this year. For this, as a team of 6 we were given an industry brief to design and make a game that would fit as a sequel to Untitled Goose Game. We divided the time we had for this assignment into realistic portions and mapped this out onto a document which we updated regularly throughout in order to track our progress relative to our plan. We also divided the work between us evenly depending on our individual skills. After this, we created a Trello boards to track our individual tasks as well.
Personally, I was given the task of modelling characters and making textures, as well as some concept art in the pre-production phase and a playboard. Whilst working on my own project I also regularly checked up on the other people in my group, seeing what they were doing, offering help if needed and organising the group to make sure we stayed on track. I think this is important because if everyone communicates effectively we can share knowledge and get the task at hand done much quicker. I also tried to keep everyone motivated, keeping them on task.
COMPOSITING
One of the most technically challenging skill sets I have learned is compositing. I learned the importance of seamless blending - if one thing is out of place, the whole piece falls apart.Â
I used after effects to do the compositing of a scene in our class' VFX sequence. I used a key light effect to remove the green-screen background on the clips, a colour mask to adjust the hue and saturation of the clips so it matched the background and a feathering effect of the edge where I had used a mask in order to fit the clips in to the scene better, as very few things in life have a perfect straight cut edge and the characters were approaching something in the foreground which was blurred anyway.Â
I also learned how to add shadows to a scene, and although this was not done perfectly, it did help to embed the characters in the scene more and create a more realistic final render. I used copies of the edited clip to make the shadows, darkening the hue and bringing the opacity down to give a shade effect and the flipping it and using a mesh warp modifier to give the right sense of stretch for the lighting.Â
This project not only helped me to learn the technical skills for the software but also helped me get an eye for things that were out of place - noticing when something should be blurred because it is far away and when a clip looks out of place because it looks cool rather than warm. These skills in particular I think will help me in a job in VFX.
CODING
To date, I have knowledge about four different coding languages. These are - HTML, Ruby, Python and C++. I am most comfortable with Python, which I have been using for 3 years and I used for my GCSE computing coursework. I am also now comfortable using C++ which I learned last year. I used C++ to successfully make a 'Space Shooter' game by following a YouTube tutorial. As well as teaching how to code in this language, it also taught me how to use Microsoft Visual Studio and Unity, of which I had used neither before. To help me retain the new information and understand the code better, I also annotated the blocks of code on word.
There were actually some issues with this tutorial as it used an older version of the programs so I had to figure out how to get around some of these problems.Â
In my own time, I have been keeping my Python skills up to date using Codecademy as well as doing some personal coding projects.
DRAWING
I have been drawing my whole life. I started to really refine my drawing skills during my GCSEs and I got very good at realism and portraiture. When I decided to go down the route of game design and concept art, I realised I would have to adjust my drawing style to be more appropriate for this field, and I also knew I would have to start drawing pictures without a reference more. I did this in my spare time alongside my course for the last two years. I practised drawing things from my mind at first, then as I got better I introduced dynamic poses for characters.
As well as this, I got a Wacom graphics tablet and learned how to draw in a digital format as I knew that this is how most concept artists draw their pieces. The main software I have been using for digital drawing is Autodesk Sketchbook. I did also try to use Adobe Photoshop but couldn't get along with it quite as well.Â
Examples of my digital work include an alien character design and textures as well as detail digital paintings.
MODELLING
I have learned how to model in 3ds Max. I have now gotten to the point where I can comfortably create models efficiently and to a high standard. The most complex model I have made to date is an astronaut for our synoptic project. This was a challenge because I was working from someone else's concept art and I hadn't actually completed a human form model before so it was new for me. However, I did manage to make the model and a texture to go with it.Â
As I have made more models, I have become very efficient at doing UV maps. It's something that can be quite time consuming but I have picked up some good practices that have helped me to do this well.
Some other models I am proud of are the UniLlama, which was a challenge set to my class and I completed it fastest and to a high standard, and the Yooka-Laylee Plant, which I made as part of an industry brief and I learned how to create models with different levels of detail using this.
