Task 5.1 - Evaluation

Final Evaluations are completed to look back on the completed product and reflect on your performance.

Please answer the following:

Explain your approach to the theme - how does your final product link to the theme?
What parts stayed the same, and what was different?
Reflect on your research and how it informed/changed the development of your final idea - how did it help you create the final product?
How well did you manage your time? What methods did you use to manage your project?
What software did you use? Why?
What problems did you face during this project? How did you solve them?
What have you learnt during this project? What would you do differently?
Reflect on peer and tutor feedback - what were you told to improve, what actions did you take to improve?

200-1000 Words Per Question.

The task for my product was that it had to link to the theme of 'Fusion'. I have created a mechanical robotic creature equipped with features from various animals, serving multiple purposes such as gathering materials and weaponry for defense, with other features aiding these purposes, giving the design improved traversability and adaptability. I think this fits the theme of fusion quite well while also creating a unique and interesting character design, as I've fused the purpose and abilities of different biological animal features whilst also fusing them with mechanical components, using these to give the character a fused purpose. Additionally, the theme I was going for in this design was a fusion between cyberpunk and sci-fi, with each of those themes being fusions themselves, which I think has also helped me to add more depth and detail into this character.

I think that my ideas to link this character towards fusion have given the design a lot more depth and detail than I could've thought of otherwise, trying to find ways to link differing themes and combine them in ways that would be efficient and helpful for the design's purpose. These ideas have also created a final product that I'm really happy with, utilising juxtaposing features that would normally not be seen together which I think makes the design stand out a lot and have a really unique, interesting appearance.

One part of my project that changed over the course of this unit was that in my initial ideas and proposal, I stated that the design would have far more weapons than it ended up having, such as flamethrowers and retractable blades. The final design ended up being a lot less combat-oriented than I had initially envisioned, as I found the design worked better as a resource-gathering robot to be deployed to uninhabitable and dangerous locations for humans than a high-power war machine created for battle. Therefore, a lot of ideas for offense and violence were removed in place of features that aided the design in transportation and collection. I think this has helped my design to stand out, as a lot of mechs I found whilst researching ideas for my design were combat-oriented. By making my mech a resource-gathering robot, I got to experiment with a lot of ideas that aren't commonly used and oversaturated in a lot of pre-existing mech designs.

Another element of my project that changed was that I had initially planned to include much more ancient Greek imagery and references. My original idea of making a fused animal was inspired by creatures from Greek mythology, and as such I wanted to include references to ancient Greece in my design and presentation boards, such as art in the style of old tapestries and tattered paper backgrounds. In the end, I ended up including very little in reference to ancient Greece aside from the idea of a fused creature and the inclusion of a scientific name, as I found it difficult to merge the two themes in a way that didn't look too out of place, having my character and presentation's styles being almost completely sci-fi and cyberpunk themed. While I do still think a successful combination between the themes of past and future would be an interesting pathway for this project, I think the design I ended up with is much better suited to being completely focused on futuristic themes and design choices and including references to ancient themes would detract from the design, making it messy and confusing.

Despite these changes, a lot of my design did remain identical to my initial proposal, including the ideas of creating a mechanical creature comprised of various other animal features, as well as still including some weaponry, despite being much less than I had initially planned. I think my final product definitely benefited from keeping these elements, as they are the main ideas that linked the design to the theme of fusion, as well as giving me the ability to fuse contrasting ideas without appearing out of place and instead creating a completely original design with interesting and developed features.

The research I did definitely affected the development of my final idea and my final result. Some very clear examples of this are the specific moodboards I made to research themes and ideas for my final product once I had decided on my initial idea and created my proposal. Not only did these give me lots of examples of features I could include in my design, both of mechs and animals, but they were also helpful in collecting resources to be used in my ideas generation when photobashing and silhouetting. The research I did in collecting these images and finding interesting elements that stood out to me helped me to create multiple photobashes with greatly varying designs, allowing me to find different features that I liked and thought worked well together and use them all together to create a final product I was happy with.

Another example of how the research I conducted aided my final product can be seen in the moodboards I created to explore elements of fusion, such as mythological creatures and fusion themes such as cyberpunk and sci-fi. This research was very valuable in generating my initial ideas, as can be evidenced by the ideas I had of combining animal features based on mythological creatures and robotic elements with glowing neon lights inspired by the ideas of cyberpunk and sci-fi themes. These elements shine through into my final product, with it being a mechanical combination of different animals.

One aspect of the research into fusion themes in particular that I would say was very helpful in my final design was revisiting the moodboards to find colour palettes associated with themes relating to my concepts which I then used in my colour and mood ideas generation to give me a range of palettes that fit the setting I was going for and that would work well together, which I think ended up working really nicely in my final design as in my opinion the final colour palette displays the futuristic theme I was aiming for really well.

I think I managed my time quite well with this project as although for the first half of the project I had to share my allocated time with completing Unit 11, I was still able to finish in time for the deadline with all of the features I wanted to include complete to a standard and level of detail I am happy with.

One method I used to manage my time for this project and ensure that I would complete everything was to create a plan for what I would do and when ahead of time. This allowed me to keep track of what I had done and what still needed to be completed, as well as giving me sufficient time for each task so that I would not become overwhelmed and end up with too much to do in not enough time. I also ensured that I completed the majority of the work a few days before the deadline, giving myself lighter tasks on the last few days of the project so that if any problems arose, I would have enough time to go back over mistakes and fix them without sacrificing time on other tasks. Overall, I think this schedule worked really well as assigning myself tasks for a day and giving myself a time limit to complete them by helped me to stay motivated and remain aware of my progress, helping me to become much more efficient than I would have been otherwise.

The software I used in this project included Adobe Photoshop for my moodboards, photobashes, silhouettes and colour ideas, 3DS Max for my blockouts and Firealpaca SE for my sketches, final pieces and presentation boards.

When sketching and drawing my designs, I chose to use Firealpaca over Photoshop as it is the software I have the most experience in drawing with. I found it to be very useful in creating my designs with the assistance of many useful features supplied with it, such as blending modes, clipping masks and transparent layers, all of which helped me keep my drawings clean and accurate to my sketches and blockouts. I also enjoyed experimenting with the blending modes in particular to see how they affected colours on the layers below them, leading to visually interesting effects such as the sci-fi screen backgrounds on the presentation boards and the glowing eyes and lights present on the design.

When 3D modelling, I chose to use 3DS Max as it is the primary 3D modelling software I have experience in and as such I was able to recreate my photobashes as blockouts more accurately and efficiently. The tools provided with 3DS Max were very useful in trying to recreate the sometimes irregular and strange shapes included in some of my photobashes, such as beetle wings and clawed arms, as I was able to extensively use the edit poly tool to warp and shape blocks and cylinders into the models I wanted. If my project were to be more 3D-oriented, I would have spent more time on the models making them cleaner, less low-poly and more detailed, however as they were only blockouts for me to trace I was quite hasty with them and left them appearing quite unfinished.

One problem I faced during this project was that I had to manage my time between completing Unit 11 at the same time as this unit, meaning I would have to ensure I was progressing in both projects and not leaving one empty and unfinished. At the start of the projects, I tried to do roughly an even amount of work on both over time, ensuring that both received similar amounts of progression. However, nearing the end of Unit 11 I began to prioritise finishing my portfolio work and other projects contained within it, completing very little in Unit 12. Once I had completed Unit 11, I only had about 2 weeks to finish Unit 12 so to ensure I hit the deadline in time, I created the plan I mentioned previously to make sure I would complete everything I needed to complete. This ended up working quite well as I was satisfied with the results of my Unit 11 work and my Unit 12 work, creating projects to a quality I was happy with and both in time for their deadlines. However, I do think I should have prioritised Unit 11 a little more when I was doing an equal amount on both, as it was the project with the earlier deadline as well as me setting some quite ambitious tasks for my portfolio which I wasn't completely able to complete, substituting in some other projects I had completed instead.

One thing I have learned from this project is how useful planning out each of your tasks and making a schedule can be. By assigning myself time periods I had to complete work by and knowing how long I had to reach my final goal really helped me to keep track of my work and stay motivated to continue making progress. While I have tried similar time-management methods before, I've always been quite poor at making plans and schedules and following them, often causing my workflow to be bumpy with large spikes and dips in the quantity of work I am able to produce within a certain time. If I were to do something different in this project, I probably would have created a plan much earlier towards the start of the project, as well as to create one for Unit 11 as well to help me manage my time between the two projects better and to help me produce work of a greater quantity and quality for each. I would also probably try and complete a bit more work during the time I shared this project with Unit 11 as I still had most of my ideas generation and onwards to complete once Unit 11 had concluded, leaving me with about two weeks to complete the rest of Unit 12, which wasn't too little time, but I think my time-management plan would have benefited a lot from a lower quantity of work that needed to be completed.

Peer and tutor feedback was very helpful for this project as I found it useful to get other people's opinions on my work and see what they thought worked well that I either agreed with, had a different opinion on, or that I had not considered. An example of this is when I was deciding on colour ideas for my designs. I was struggling to decide which palettes worked best so I asked some friends and got them to vote on their favourite designs. The colour palette I ended up using contained elements from the two ideas with the most votes, being mostly white and blue, which were some of the colours I thought worked best as well. I think that this choice ended up working really well for the design as the simple white and blue colours help to make the design appear clean and sleek, helping to show the idea I was going for of a futuristic robot.

Another way in which peer feedback was helpful in this project was peer reviews and how they helped me to improve the quality of my blog. An example of this is how I was told that I could use some visual imagery to help present my initial ideas in task 3.1 more effectively. Before I added them, I just had nothing but text, making my ideas quite uninteresting to look at and potentially leaving some ideas vague or poorly explained. I think the addition of images relating to my idea and showcasing something similar to what I wanted to achieve helped to present my idea more clearly and leave less ambiguity as to what I meant.

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