Sentry Gun postmortem

Hello! Today's post is about refelcting on my work! Well, my sentry gun project in particular which I loved.

Here's a video of my sentry gun in action:

I liked this project because they gave us complete creative freedom for the first time. I think this is the first project I am happy with the result. Up until now I never liked my work, but this time was different and it made me feel more confident about my skills and it made me more determined to work harder.

Even though I believe this project was sucessful, there's a lot of room for improvement!

One of the things that the tutors pointed out is that I could've come up with a stronger design if I had done more iterations which I completely agree with. I feel that the rock could've been different, more exciting, a better shape with a better texture.

We get set projects with tight deadlines to push us to work fast through the concepting and spend most of our time on the 3D aspect and that makes me skip a little bit through the steps. I certainly need to learn to work faster...and make the right visual choices faster.

I strated this project with a completely different idea and I spent a few days working on it until I realised that it wasn't working and that mistake shortened my overall project time.

I also feel that my baking could've been better. It was my first time using Zbrush and I came out better than I expected but it could've been way better. I really like using this software and I want to keep using it and improving!

One of the major problems I came across was time management. I need to allow time for the unexpected. I kept on working on this project unitl the night before the deadline and I missed out on adding sound to the scene...
I am proud of what I have accomplished, specially the lightning particle effect but I could've done a bit more if I had allowed myslef more time.

Also, I was pointed out that the emissive color for the rock cracks wasn't standing out a lot and looking at it now they are right. It might have been due to my normal maps or my texture or most likely both of them.

In conclusion, this project has taught me a lot, and it has raised my standard of quality on my projects. I learned how to sculpt in Zbrush, and how to create particle effects in unreal which seemed very difficult to me before this project started.

It's made me realise that I am not as bad I think I am and that maybe, I have a chance to make it into the industry someday.

bye bye

Carla.