ba2 - 500 Word evaluation

I would regard this project as more successful than the previous. I think the best decision I made was to start playing with ZBrush early. It allowed me to sculpt more quickly and try out more designs before committing to the final sculpt. ZBrush is a lot of fun. I certainly find it easier to express my ideas in than Maya or Photoshop. 

Most, if not all of my iteration was done in ZBrush. The pro is that it helped with understanding the software. The con is that maybe the iterations are less varied than they could be.

I’m very happy with the final gargoyle. Judging by the reaction of my friends I’d say people generally recoil to some degree when they first see the sculpt, which was my goal. One aspect I’m not as happy with is the stand from which the gargoyle is hanging. The stand arose from the fact that gravity pulls water towards the earth so it seemed counterproductive to have some kind of system which pumps the water upwards. The design does look a bit forced though. Hopefully it’s original at least. If I’d had more time I would’ve spent it refining the stand.

I did notice the export to 3D printer option in the menus. It isn’t directly related to games design but I’d love to model figurines as a job. I don’t suppose the polycount or topology would really be an issue, not that I found it much of an issue in this project either. 

I was dreading starting the essay as I always do when the title is vague. However, once I mind mapped the games industry and figured out what I wanted to write about It went quite swimmingly. I was able to gather a huge library of references form my collection of YouTube videos and bookmarked articles on games design. I’ve also been reading through ‘Reality is Broken’ by Jane Mcgonigal and ‘Understanding Videogames: The essential Introduction’.  I’ve recently finished reading Anna Anthropy’s ‘Rise of the Videogame Zinesters’ too so I had lots of references in mind when writing the essay. I think that helped.

I emailed Robin Silcock and Lester Francois, director of ‘Game Loading: Rise of the Indies’, to be released March 13^th. Both are great contacts to have and I’m much more confident in messaging game developers online now. I spoke to some game developers in real life too at the Norwich Indie Game Dev meetup. It was very cool to be in a room with so many indie game devs at once and to get tips on my own game development.

Overall, it has been a successful project. I’m much more interested in 3D modelling now as a potential career choice and I think I’ve improved a lot. I’m definitely going to continue using ZBrush in my spare time.