Dichotomous Character Project: Post Mortem

With the dichotomous character project over I have now had some time to reflect on what happened during the project. If I performed well, what could be improved upon, what I should take from it and what I would change if I were to do it again?

In terms of meeting the brief and achieving what it specified in the time given I would say that I had done a good job. The goals of the project were to design the 2 characters before modelling and texturing with no limits on creative and production choices for the project. I achieved that and many of the stretch goals of the project were met so I ticked that box but I probably suffered for trying to achieve some of these goals. I really wanted to animate the character when concepting and because of this I feel like I might have rushed to modelling and rigging stages. I am fairly happy with the time management I used on this project but do think that at times I got distracted in labs which did slow parts of my process down during the creation phase in which if I was concentrating I could have had more time to create a better product.

Kept with original exaggeration

During the concepting phase I feel like i did a good job of finding a direction to the project and pursuing it in detail. I really enjoyed this part of the project and feel that the only thing that really let me down was my technical skill especially when making value and colour choices where I am still learning about it. If I were to change my decision making process I would choose a different head for the older sister because the head I choose looked too masculine. I would choose the helmeted one and push the design to some more extremes with the body having many more scratches and badges as well as some patches.

very quick paint over showing some of the basic changes I could make.

For the model creation phase I think that while it was fun and a good exercise of modelling and low poly modelling skill I think I should have just made one model for each character and focused on making them as high quality while still limiting my tri count.

Overall I would say that I am happy with the project because I worked hard and got some results. It has revealed some massive flaws that I have in my 3D skills that need to seriously be addresses in my opinion. I really need to push harder and have changed some of my personal projects so that there are more 3D based ones over the Christmas period.