It's not so bad after all....

Before we stated the Queens project, all through summer and over Christmas i was dreading doing it.

I was convinced i would be with a group i didnt get on with at all, i would get slated and told to do everything again all the time and i would feel like the most useless Game Art student available.

Fortunatly, it wasnt like that! :-)

I became a member of Team Pig.

When the groups were picked out, I wasnt too sure if i was going to get along with everybody. Partly through lack of previous communication and then partly because of a possible clash in personalities.

But things just didnt turn out like that.

To be honest, i have quite enjoyed this group project even though at first it was a bit hectic being thrown into tighter schedules and having so much to do.

It wasnt just a case of getting it done for yourself, it was also the pressure of gettin it done in time so as not to let the group down.

Our first task was the concept art. I'd never really done much proper digital art before this year, and ive improved as time has gone on. I wasnt so confident doing the concept art, i had a fear of getting laughed at (i dont know why, i always have done!).

It turned out okay though, we were each assigned an area which i think worked really well, then we could concentrate on one specific place and then it was like we each had a little bit more of a personal input, being able to make one area our own.

After that was out of the way, it was time for us little piggies to begin making our millions of assets.

I enjoyed doing many smaller things for this project rather than 2/3 really huge things. I did take on a relatively big and important asset which was the stairs.

I was a bit unsure of how to go about doing it, bit i thought to myself that if i didnt just bite the bullet and get on with things like this now, i never will do.

They turned out okay. Towards the end of the project however only about a week ago to be precise, i decided that the stairs wernt right, so before i put a rusty dirty texture onto them, i changed the model slightly.

This took me a fair amount of time and the texturing took forever, but it looks okay and it will be submerged under water in any case!

But im still proud of the stairs.

As mean as this may be, it was funny to watch all the other group dramas, simply because we had none.

I did often wonder if our group was kind of the calm before the storm and absolutely everything would blow up eventually, all at once. But thankfully, this didnt happen.

The only real glitch which we had was the walkway tiff between Alex Hill and Tom Li, but that was easily solved by a stern word from Jesus.

Good Times.

Our pig team consisted of missing pigs at meetings, Kittos enthusiasm and many random ideas which we threw about and played with, thought would be fun to do but didnt seem suitable.

On occasions we did feel the pressure and it was piled on a bit, but we thought of rational solutions rather than all running around like headless pigs and screaming from panic.

Thanks to Jesus, we had a block out, and a damn good looking level. We all put in a lot of ahrd work on all of our small things, but our lists of things to do was nowhere near as big as Jesus'

I've learnt a lot just by doing this project. I could never remember how to do things and what difference they made to a model, but this time ive gone all out with the models.

If i didnt understand something, forgot how to do it or just plain didnt know, somebody int he team was there to help me.

For that, i am thankful :)

I am a lot more knowledgeable when it comes to modelling now and digital painting.

Theres still a lot i need to learn and i do lag behind other people in the class, but only practise and observation will help me to become a faster, more precise modeller and artist.

Even though you can undoubtedly know everything about 3DS Max and Photoshop.

I loved the group project. I'll miss Team Pig!

The combined effort and communication took us far, prevented problems, but most of all, gave us all a rather nice end result.