Final Evaluation

This project was going to be a cinematic opening, that is the only idea I had prior to even starting the project. I would design every aspect of the setting I created around the idea that the project is not the game itself, but a cinematic portrayal of it. I ended up landing on the idea of a flooded world because I thought the idea was interesting and could make for an intriguing setting, what I didn't realise I had done, was give myself far more work than I thought I did. I wasn't a stranger to making my own assets; I have done parallel versions of this project in my own time for fun but I had forgotten how long it had taken me. The most comparable project was a 1:50 long trailer that I remember taking me a month, however I didn't take into account the preparation that went into that, which would've taken me another month. The result of this miscalculation was a vulnerability to outside factors, which got exploited... thrice. I'm still feeling the third. I think I could've just gotten away with the amount of work if I hadn't been ill twice and could work on the practical onsite but as it stands now, I hate the fact I had to change the formatting last minute to get something that didn't feel like a failure. Although the irony of editing whilst i'm half deaf is pretty funny to me out of context, within it, it is... quite frustrating as you could imagine. Above all else though, I think the greatest weakness was of the very inception; the cinematic opening itself. I didn't have to learn any new fundamentals, I just built on top of what I already knew. Yes I think I vastly improved in those areas: hair simulations, modelling humanoid characters and of course animation to name a few. But ultimately I leave this project with nothing new other than a few seconds to add to a portfolio. I also spent a lot of practical time not animating which was my main focus. With a better idea, I could have also learnt about animation implementation, animation blending etc. those two aspects are something that would be completely new to me. With that being said, I already know what i'm doing for my fmp next year. For now however, with this overview done I'm going to take a look at specific areas.

I can tell the ideas page was written a while ago; the innocent ignorance of the future is evident through my happy writing. Still, I found generating ideas to be decently fun, I already had two ideas going into the project, being the opening cinematic and kill move collection. The third idea took a lot of work figure out and I'm sure that is evident, I learnt from my two years at Suffolk One studying media production that I am not good at advertising, so I knew I wasn't going to take that third idea. I landed on what I know believe to be the inferior idea of the two viable projects however that leaves me in a solid position to do that for next year if nothing better comes along.
The ideas page is also where I developed the initial setting. I'll get straight to the point here, I should left have the setting here. The names, factions and backstory were never mentioned in the project, they should have been in an ideal world where I had 10 months to make the most detailed 5 minutes of your life, however I didn't and I did 90% of what I needed to do for the setting here. That being said, I had a blast thinking of this crappy little setting. I know its not the most compelling, likely or reasonable setting to exist but it was very fun to make and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Finally, the experimentation. The haunter of my dreams, I did like the lighting though! The experimentation proved I had a lot to learn when it came to making underwater scenes but that if it came to it, I could bash out small scenes quickly. Of course that would've been the last minute thing to do and I had no small scenes I could bash out. I obviously didn't end doing this us because only 3 scenes were made. 

Firstly, I remember that I initially wrote the proposal wrong, so I wrote it again. If that doesn't set the tone for the following paragraph I don't know what will. Let's start with the moscow analysis. I failed it all. At least 4 scenes? I have 3 and even that is a stretch. 3 exposition shots? Well thats a bit subjective, all 3 can portray information if you look for it. The first tells you (if you can tell its supposed to be underwater) that there is a city underwater. We don't know why yet. We also see a fish like man executing another fish like man with a harpoon gun, that tells us that violence is prevalent in these cities and that harpoon guns are used, which tells us water is also prevalent. This gets reinforced when we are introduced to the main character (which I hope the head on shot portrays, that is a lot of heavy lifting for a short shot though) and the first thing that happens to them is violence. if that counts as exposition then at a stretch the other two are as well. 1 action shot? We got two, though I don't think that single win will carry us here. 45 seconds long, discounting the disclaimer 43, tight but not exactly met. Well thats not exactly looking good is it? Actually I don't think any of that matters. There weren't any fundamentals I genuinely needed to make a quality product other than for it to meet its purpose. What was the cinematic's purpose? To excite the viewer, but its not for me to decide if it achieved that though, more on that when I look at the final product later. Nothing else on the moscow was met, I didn't even plan for the 7 scenes. I do think that I approached the moscow entirely wrong here and this is how and why:
Firstly, I should have left it until after I was ready to plan the actual cinematic. Shot count for example doesn't mean anything to producers, they are interested in run time. The 'must have' section should have been about the purpose of the cinematic, it should have been points like: excite the viewer, intrigue them, make them want to play the game being shown. Emotional reactions are hard to quantify, however these points guide the narrative of the cinematic in the right direction. Already I'm thinking of different shots that follow this path: opening shots of test chambers with people inside, the ice caps melting and the world flooding. If played right those three shots tell the viewer that earth has flooded but also created intrigue as to how those test chambers have anything to do with that. Sure that idea isn't perfect, the test chamber might be completely out of place and seem random in an off putting way however its better that what I ended up with. 'Should have' should have been about what features in the cinematic that are easy/simple hooks, otherwise known as selling points. At this point you're selling people the fantasy of this world, so shots could include sailing against storms, fighting both an angered nature and the horrific mistakes of humanity, discovering remnants of the old world deep underwater etc. This is also a flaw of the planning, I focused on the gameplay scenarios and not the fantasy. I think that thinking came about from the Starcraft 2 cinematic where the units were accurate to the gameplay, but ultimately if you look at every cinematic I studied for this project, all of them (less so for cyberpunk) focused on the fantasy and the feeling of the game. 'Could haves' I think I did correctly, narration would be cool and work well if it suited the cinematic, however I also think i thought about 'could haves' wrong because at the time my thinking was "If I have time or the resources I can do this." rather than "if it suits the cinematic and I have the time".  Otherwise, the content of 'could have' I think is fairly solid. 'Don't have' I think would be quality control, I'll be honest I'm still not sure what I would put there that isn't obvious. I suppose if copyright was an issue, copyrighted songs would go in there but it isn't.
The (what I think is fairly solid) project action plan was followed for roughly 4 weeks and then it was all just 'animate' and in my defence, I did as much animation as I could then. A more fitting single verb for what I actually did is 'produce'. Otherwise for the 4 weeks where it was actually detailed, I found it to be fairly helpful. 

(the following overlaps with research) The fault to doing too much setting research and not enough practical research lies more so in the project itself because I simply had very little new to learn. Ocean simulations? I'd already done one but it looked awful so it might as well have been new. Other than that, I had done everything before but just not that well. I looked at maybe one tutorial? and that was for the ocean simulation, the rest I figured out on my own. Great for being independant, but awful for an fmp where I'm supposed to learn new stuff. The hair simulation brush? I vaguely remembered that something like that existed from a tutorial I don't even remember,  found it and after 5 minutes of messing around had it figured out, a hair brush is hardly rocket science but that is pretty much what happened for almost every single thing I did in this project. For shaders, I used the same techniques i've been building on for around a year now, same with lighting and cinematography but for far longer. For walk cycles, I drew on knowledge I'd gained from doing them in the past and the references I used back then. For every other animation I used: what I know of physics, what I know makes an animation look better from past experience, my imagination and occasionally I would get up and move around in a similar motions. This isn't to make a point of "I knew it all already" and to make me look smart, which I know it doesn't, it is to show that this was the wrong project to go with and that truly becomes apparent in this practical section. Usually, being able to figure things out on your own is a good thing, but in this case I had too much of a foothold in what I would be doing and I could figure everything out that I needed to without help which again, is great practically, but absolutely catastrophic for an fmp where I should have developed a new skill.
With that rant over, lets take a look at the practical work itself, starting with that ocean simulation. I think at the time that was the biggest confidence booster of "I can do this" and it definitely was one of the harder parts of the project. Using generated normals that changed the shader itself was completely new to me and was probably the biggest thing that I learnt you could do. The result i'm also very happy with too, though in hindsight, it would've been nicer if the rendered scene was of a sunset and a higher resolution. Although technically not practical, I will mention the shotlist. I've already mentioned that I could've been better earlier and that still stands. the shots were focused too much on gameplay scenario and not enough on feeling and fantasy. The best shot that was made for that was the last one which wasn't produced.
Now for production and that started off with a base human mesh. I think this is where I lost some of that innocence: "the hands are backwards. Words cannot express the pain". In actuality, I am really, really happy with how that human mesh turned out. I remember being terrified during it and saving every 5 seconds however I do look back at that fondly. Yes the hands got destroyed and I had to work with mitten men during animation, yes the legs look like liposuction gone wrong and yes the face is mildly lovecraftian however, the spine is pretty good! Jokes aside, I know its not perfect (or even good) but genuinely that mesh might be what i'm most proud of. Considering my anatomical knowledge hasn't improved much since GCSE biology, and I really am not that great at drawing full figures yet, it looks... pleasant? At least it allowed pleasant looking models to come from it. The legs also were very easily fixed when I worked on the main character. Speaking off, I'm also very happy with that model too, it wasn't as badass as I hoped but it had a... charm. There isn't much to mention about how that was made, same with the Volraan and Celerian. Around this point I was met with my first cold a delay of a few days... not too bad but not great. The bad part of this was the timing; I haven't made it a secret that I work better at home, less distractions, less anxiety. I can just shut off for a few hours and focus. This was at easter break where I had two whole weeks to pretty much just 'do' the project. the cold started right as easter started and with my current illness, it seems like nothing but at the time it was very annoying because I couldn't focus properly, I pretty much lost a week to that cold, the other time hole as well was social stuff, a portion of my friends are at university and we don't talk remotely often, so when they are back from uni we make the most of it, which was just before and after the cold, the cold period being when I planned to work. This was the first, very recoverable knife in the gut to running out of time. Volraan was very hard to get looking right and ultimately I don't think I succeeded. Celerian was easier and went very well the second I introduced eyebrows. The brineman (which I forgot about until just now) was the favourite model of the people who responded to my survey which makes sense when it doesn't have much competition, the redrawing is genuinely one of the best drawings i've done so i'm very happy with that.
Onto animation. So although I don't know it yet, my project is flawed at its inception. This is the part where I make it as good as possible to counteract that. Did I succeed? Well considering first shot I created that was supposed to be opening, worked better as a closing shot... no. Ok to give myself some slack, around this point I also realise that I cannot make shots or work on anything practical on site because every blend file I needed reference the one on my home pc, and I can't change the file path because the blend files crash before they open... yipee. The second knife in the gut to running out of time, potentially the most fatal of them. The animation itself was going smoothly, I had time to work on it at home but I was very quickly running out time. scenes took 2 days each to finish, so 8 days (i'd already done one shot by that point). That was enough time! Even with the camping trip that I got the date wrong and missed a (to be brutally honest, fairly useless) friday of college. After coming back from that trip I had about... 4 days of being healthy, two of which were well spent on the second scene... which was taking longer than I thought it would. By friday I was ill again! Yaaaay! And this one... is rough. In a twisted sense, I couldn't go into college so it meant I could work more on the practical which I needed to however at some point I suddenly realise that I have 4 days left and 5 days needed. 1 day goes past and the following 3 days were included in the worst of this illness which has only just started getting better and I couldn't get any work done. That quite literally takes us to the deadline and was the third knife in the gut for running out of time, except this was much more of an execution. Usually I would've written some section about how I overcame and worked through the illness but I didn't and the only case of doing that was when I edited and couldn't really hear what I was doing. Speaking of editing, I'll go into that now.
Editing was achieved through using DaVinci resolve 17 which I am very familiar with, I've been using it on and off for about 3 years now and i've prefered it to the rest of the editing softwares i've used throughout the years. I really hope it continues on its way to becoming industry standard. the sound effects were all sourced from youtube in some way or another, I've had most of them for years so tracking them down to their initial source would be impossible. I would have given sound effects more thought if I wasn't already doing 80% not animation. I couldn't make the cinematic work without the other scenes, (and to be honest, a completely flawed shotlist with no structure) so that is when I decied to change the format last minute into an animation showcase. On paper that sounds like a big change but really it just meant a disclaimer at the start and then just a random piece of music to make it feel less awkward. I do believe that this was a bit of a cheap way to make the final product look more finished but at the same time, its better than an abrupt end after the second scene.

Moving on from that massive block of text and its subject, I'm now going to talk about the actual final outcome and my thoughts on it. Firstly, no amount of glow effect on some text will take away from its message: "this isn't finished, don't think about it, just look at it". The tone is set for the video and its not a good one. That was a big mistake of tone setting, first impressions and confidence. The shots I showed were finished products, but now that I have told you they weren't, they're going to appear worse. With that being said,  given the same situation a second time, I would do it again. Why? What else was I supposed to? Fill in the times where the unfinished scenes would have been with just their audio? Audio isn't a focus of this project so no, it would be a waste of time. The alternative would be to let the cinematic play out as it would do, but cut away when I run out of footage, that avoids the issue with that insecure disclaimer but in my opinion has a far worse drawback: leaving impression. I would much rather take the audience having a sullied impression during the showreel and have the last thing they see be a finished scene, than let it play out and then let it end suddenly. In other words, I would rather the audience to find out that it was unfinished at the start than the end, because the ending is what audience leaves with and affects their opinion in the future. Therefore, I was in a catch 22 position.
Moving onto the actual product now. Here i'm going to look at the cinematography, animation and lighting. I will talk about the actual shot list afterwards. First shot, I specifically remember making the camera movement linier, I must have accidentally changed that before rendering it. So the first camera movement looks awful, a second horrible first impression. At least the second shot looks better camera wise. Third shot sets the tone for the rest of the cinematic. It could've been done better but it wasn't awful, I like how how the harpoon moves like a snake, gives a viscous feel. Using a tweak bone for the impact of the harpoon was a neat idea too, though since it was the first time I tried it, it didn't work out so well. Now onto what I think is the best walk cycle i've ever animated... for that shot, the hips needed more movement which isn't relevant for the shot but I'm very happy with the walk cycle itself. The following fight scene is alright I guess? It could've been better but I remember being very tired when making it, so I got lazy with some stuff. When the PC ends up on the floor though, now that i'm happy with. Not perfect, but I like the bounce and the roll.  I also like the snappiness of the stomp catch, and the fluidity of the weight shift and the very (inexplicably) powerful elbow. At this point its obvious I skip out a few parts because I wanted to keep the pace up, I still think it was the right call. I'm happy with that run and I am very happy with the underwater effect, which is probably my favourite part of this outcome. The following sequence would be much better if the lighting allowed for it to be visible, I remember knowing this at the time and not really finding a solution other than to make the entire scene brighter which would have compromised the earlier shots.  I think I should have gone through with it. Still, I'm happy with what you can see. And the final shot was slowed down to be more dramatic after I asked for some opinions on it.
Now for the shotlist. Honestly, I think that the scenes themselves were... not great. They were planned horribly and I approached them wrong. To avoid repeating myself I will summarise my thoughts from an earlier point I made: A game cinematic shows you the fantasy (the feeling) of a game, it should be created to evoke the feelings that the gameplay should at its peak. This one was created to show you what was in the game. Ultimately this boils down to the purpose of the cinematic, however I feel like that is an inferior purpose to making a good cinematic. A good cinematic will make you feel something, and mine (if it was finished) wouldn't of because it wasn't designed to. To put bluntly, this cinematic was never going to be good because of how I was approaching it. So what I do to fix that? Firstly, and most obviously, change the purpose of the cinematic to tell a story through which the fantasy of the game/setting is conveyed. Instantly, I have a few ideas: an submarine expedition into some old ruins where they find an old genetics lab. The group poke, prod and question stuff until they find an answer but before they can convey that information, they are attacked by brine dudes or volraan. Another idea is a human uprising within innsmouth, or a boat sailing to somewhere but it gets raided by volraan in a storm, or the story of what happened to earth. Thats 4 ideas in about 5 minutes, quite a few... thats not a good thing and thats an issue with the setting which is far too generalised. All of these ideas (apart from the story about earth) are localised and inconsequential, unless you get the viewer attached to someone or something in that cinematic, it will not matter at all and will be forgotten. Lets look at another cinematic: Starcraft 2 legacy of the void. What's that about? Only the protoss retaking their homeworld... its not as if thats been their main goal for nearly 2 decades of real time.
That is an issue of the research phase, I should have made a story and I should have made the game idea more linier for a better cinematic so that I could have got a more compelling premise for the cinematic. There is a reason that I wanted a scene where two large factions charged at each other when I first started this project, at the time I thought it was because it looked cool and was hype. But now I know its because it had such a strong meaning to it in the context of starcraft's legendary cinematic.

I have one final point to make that basically encompasses the entire project. And that is also to do with a previous point I have made; the idea I went with, the game cinematic. In choosing to make a cinematic, I was making a video or a piece of media. Something that is watched, not played, and was therefore in a different language to most other fmps. Now yes this does make my project much more unique, it also alienated it from a lot of the resources I had. I have just done a media production project within a games design course with games design tutors. It was only linked to games by a choice of language 'game cinematic' or simply 'cinematic'. If I had called it an animated short film (which it practically was) then what relevance does it have to the course? Well some of the skill set overlaps, games need animations to function, but wouldn't it have been better to combine what I want to work on with what this course is about... so why didn't I work on game animation? I could have changed the technicality to game cutscene and it would've worked better, since then its working within game engine. Still, my point is that through my choice of project, I alienated myself a lot of the resources I would've had and didn't directly utilise anything I had learnt from this year.

Ultimately, I am happy with what I produced. How could I not be? I had a blast making it... even if I was in a fair amount of physical pain from various illness during its production and I was editing whilst half deaf. The quality of animation is around my average at the moment, I've done better but I've also done worse so as long as I'm improving i'm happy. To conclude my thoughts and this evaluation: this cinematic could've been a lot better; it could have been finished. But I am still happy with what was produced and the process through which it was has been a lot fun.