Sprint 6

FINAL STILLS

REEL

POSTMORTEM

• PROJECT: Planetary Parcels - Chris Hietala-Hill - Credits: Character models by Epic Games - Epic Content ("Posed Humans 1") on Epic Games Marketplace

• Design: One strength from this project that I think worked really well was the use of the color scheme I decided on. By having a color palette it was a lot easier to decide what color to make objects, and it also made the whole environment look a lot more cohesive. One weakness from the project is I think the original retro-futurist style got a bit lost, and the environment turned more into the direction of just retro with a sprinkle of futuristic in it.

An unforeseen problem with this design of the environment was how symmetrical it is. In it's current state there is a large empty space in the middle of the room, which looks fine, but it can look quite empty when walking down the middle of it. The symmetry can also make the room look very "copy, paste." One way I could fix this is either by adding a hero asset at the end of the middle so there is more focus on an object rather than empty space, or by making the room non-symmetrical.

• Scope: I think I planned the scope of the project very well. I got mostly everything that I wanted to get done, done. I'm happy that I was able to pull of a project with a larger scope because that was my goal at the beginning of the quarter. I think it was very reasonable amount of work for the given amount of time that we had.

• Planning: I would call the planning for this project to be a success. I thought I did a pretty good job on predicting how much time it would take me to complete my tasks. I was usually close to my estimated times and there weren't too many time in the quarter where I felt overwhelmed. There were only a couple of things that I would still like to work on that I didn't end up having the time to complete.

• Execution/Testing: One of the difficulties of the project was encountering small technical errors that would take a long time to fix, but provide minimal changes within the project. One example of this is when blueprinting my interactable doors, sometimes they would work perfectly fine, and other times they would travel 2x the distance they were supposed to. One thing that I discovered about my interests is that I really enjoy set dressing, it was one of my favorite parts of this project. One unforeseen problem relating to the demand of this project was budgeting my time wisely, and also trying not to get too caught up in it. In the beginning of the quarter it was harder for me to schedule time to sit down and work for a couple of hours, but once I got a routine going it helped a lot to stay on track.

• Support: When things weren't going to plan with my project I often turned to my classmates for help and to get their opinions. By collaborating with each other we would unintentionally solve problems in each others' projects. When getting support, the process would often include looking at the problem in the project, exploring settings in Unreal, looking at past projects, and looking for information online.

• Communication: While I did almost everything solo for this project, I got the help of my roommate for art direction on the paintings hanging in the environment. My roommate, Patrick, is a graphic-design major, so he helped me choose a style for the paintings because I was a little lost on what to do. It was also fun to bounce ideas off of classmates inside, and outside, of class, doing that made the solo project feel a bit more collaborative.

• Learning: Overall, I believe this project is a success. I think it'll look really nice in my portfolio, until my skills grow more over time. I was able to execute the project that I proposed at the beginning of the quarter, and more importantly I'm really pleased with how it ended up turning out.