Reflection

My capstone journey revolves around improving on aspects I am weak at, and getting used to a schedule. Overall, I think my capstone project turned out to be successful. I met most of my goals and was able to make the final products I intended to. I also stuck to the timeline fairly well through the first semester, but went a little off in the second semester. I also created new ways to test my skills as the year went on.

In the first semester, the first two months were used to create surveys to collect people's opinions on certain colors, shapes, and body types to see how I could create characters that emitted a certain personality when you first looked at them. I originally planned to send it to the entire class, but ended up sending it to only my friends. After I had done that, I would start by creating faces and then move on to full characters to practice in a sort of hands-on kind of way. I also used my friends to try to guess their personality, and to my luck, it worked most of the time, spare a few characters that didn't go well. After this, I took a break and focused on fusing both animals and Pokemon since it requires both creativity and knowledge on character design. To my suprise, the later ones turned out very well and were mixed into a creature I liked. In the last few weeks of the semester, I turned my focus to the portfolio I had planned to do and created a 'test' one that would give me an idea of what to put into my actual one.

The second semester took many different turns as I tried various things to improve on my design. I finished off the test portfolio, leaving it until March to put together the real one. I soon realized a good way to see my improvement in action was to redesign my various characters I have created throughout the year. Some characters faced very minimal changes, like slightly different colors or clothes, but some were changed vastly with different clothes, hair, or even a totally different species. After I was sure I had improved, I created a small guide to character design. It highlights the two main points in design, colors and shapes, and why they're important on characters. It also provides examples to the points and elaborates what's good about them. After I was done, I decided to try to make a full story to flesh out some of my character's stories, since I feel that's important in design too. I took around two months and is twenty-two pages long when pasted into Google Docs. I was also able to send some of my things to my aunt, who works in graphic design.

Even though my project was successful in my eyes, there were some struggles that went along with it. For example, I was limited to art programs that had no layers or advanced options, which made it harder to draw. I also had no drawing tablet, which makes it easier to draw on a computer. My portfolio was hard to develop too, as a lot of my art is in the same angle or zoomed in the same way. However, even through these challenges, I was able to have some successes as I was able to get in contact with people and met my goal of improvement.

In conclusion, I feel my project was a success from a technical standpoint. I was able to stay on track and even do a few extra things, such as writing a story or creating a guide. It was very fun to have a year-long project doing something i genuinely enjoy and would want to do in the future. Though there were challenges, I am still happy with my project and hope to do something similar in the future.