World Building – Post Mortem

The goal of this project was to develop an original concept and the world around it and to create a single static image to capture it.

 

Positive

 

• Generally everything

I’m pretty happy with the entire project, it turned out really well and is my best piece to date, continually asking for, receiving and iterating on feedback into the project as much as possible I was able to develop my concept further than I have ever before.

Shading / lighting is something I often shy away from but I feel I’ve made huge strides with improving those skills with this project.

 

• The result closely reflected my initial concept

Whenever I have a new idea I always rush into it and try painting the final image but being forced to take my time and flesh out the concept over a few weeks really helped solidify what I wanted from it before I’d put too much blood sweat and tears into it.

Concepting and iterating and generally developing the world to build a solid foundation for the world to start with before starting on the shot at all.

 

• Process

Other than the workflow feeling a bit backwards at times I could still see the benefits and gained a lot from taking the time to do so many different workflow. As a class we made suggestions on  how to streamline the World Builders process. I suggested that we rearrange the order of a few of the tasks and when we learn them, such as doing the shot deconstruction before starting to do the composition of the shot and the 3D blockout after that then going and doing the paint overs. 

 

 

 

Negative

 

• Effects

As much as I love the particle effects I’ve made, if I had more time I’d love to tweak some things (which I will later)

The Snow, I can make out the bounding box of the particle system so I’d just need to change the numbers a bit. The Smoke, it looks unnatural with how fast and horizontal the snow is moving, again I’d just have to play and fiddle with the settings for a little while. Generally just leave more time for post-production.

 

 

• Time Management

My time management became an issue towards the end of the project. Although I recognise that the particle effects look really good in the end, if I had more time I’d love to tweak some things. This can easily be done by changing the bounding box variables and just switching up the numbers a bit.

The smoke looks unnatural with how fast and horizontal the snow is moving. It looks a bit unrealistic when you look at the piece as a whole. If I had managed my time better I would like to have fiddled with the settings more. And generally just leave more time for post-production and effects.

 

 

• Polish

One big thing that annoys me now that it’s finished is that the polish of the foreground is waayyyyy higher than the mid or the background, destroying any continuity of the art.

I’m not over the moon with the texturing of the ground and the river/lake, compared to the detail in the rock, trees and the crystal the lake might as well be blank space. One way I could catch this happening would be to render out earlier iterations and take a step back to look at it, take a break then come back analyse the thing as a whole.

 

 

 

Conclusion

 

I’ve learned lots of different workflows and methods on how to pump out concept art faster, I’ve learned basic composition rules and basic colour theory. I learned how to create awesome particle systems in AE using Red Giant’s Particular Plug-in buuuut my trial’s gonna run out soon unfortunately.