One week to go

Hello! OTM project is coming to an end and I am not ready for it to be over, there's still a lot more we could do! Anyways I'd like start by reflecting on the previous post and the presentation in general.

The topic was interesting and I spend quite a long time doing research about it and learning the general opinion about it. In fact, I had too much information that trying to fit everything into a 3 min presentation was an impossible task.

The presentation itself was okay, I had a good start but around slide 4 I messed up my lines and in my head I went blank. Thankfully I didn't stand there like a statue and I kept talking around the topic. I knew my main points so I just improvised and made sure that I mentioned them at some point during my presentation.

I believe the tutors picked up on that and my mark won't be as good as it would've been if I had a smooth talk all the way through. I think that my main problem is that I had too much to say and I kept thinking about the time limit which made me lose concentration. Next time I will include less information per slide and allow myself a little break between slides.

I tried to dress appropriately and be engaging while talking as well as making a  good use of body language in order to convey my emotions. I believe my main struggle was trying to cope with my nerves. A little bit more practice would have been handy but I need to learn how to stay calm in presentations because it affects my overall performance. I think the best way to overcome this problem is practice, in other words, do more presentations!

And as promised, here's the little animation I did for my dichotomous character re-submission.

Until next time, bye!

Has technology killed communication?

Hello everyone, today's post will be dedicated to a presentation I had to deliver about a week ago for my Critical Studies module.

Has technology killed communication? In a world flooded by smart devices, have we lost the ability to talk to each other? Or is it just a phase in the evolution of our society?

It all started when I watched the video for Stromae's new single Carmen.

Stromae - Carmen

Its message is clear 'Don't let social media control your life'. After watching the video it left me thinking 'Has is grown to that extent?' and 'How far will it grow?'

Videos like 'Look up' by Gary Turk and 'IDIOTS' by Big Lazy Robot appear on our news feed from time to time to remind us what our society is turning into. They tell us to switch off from technology, to stop experiencing life behind a screen and to stay away from the social media giant. But is it really that bad?

Look Up - video

IDIOTS - video

To help me find an answer to this debate, I simplified some of the issues with technology into three different sections: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

The Good: Digital media connects people! That's why they were created on the first place! They give people freedom to express themselves. It makes possible to talk with someone across the world, it even allows us to meet new people. We have never been so close to each other. Why should we reject it then?

The Bad: All the content available to use can become overwhelming and at times we become too busy updating our online presence that we forget our surroundings. Sharing part of yourself and finding out that other people likes it can lead to vanity and turn you into someone you are not.

The Ugly: Being able to express your opinion freely means that any opinion is valid and hateful content can damage one's self esteem. And then there;s those who's online profile is so acclaimed that they become attention seekers. And worst of all, social technology takes away our privacy.

The reason we get involved with socializing online is to share part of our lives with those who are close to us. It is a fact that most people we interact with are our real life friends and family. It makes sense that in a world moved by technology, our communication with each other will be influenced by it.

Does that mean we will become alone someday?

Online friends can't hurt your feeling whereas real life ones will. By losing that attachment to people we could become shallow and cold. But then again, we are sociable beings. We need to be in contact with people, it's what makes us human.

In conclusion, the way we communicate with each other is changing, it has changed throughout history and it will continue to change. So, has technology killed communication? No, in fact, it has increased so much that from time to time it's good to switch off all devices and stop talking.

Thank you for reading!

Coffee overdose

Hello! This week have been crazy! Only two weeks left to work on the OTM project. presentations, re-submission of my character project and on top of that a 2500 word reflective essay. It has been a long week and coffee is what kept me going to labs.

On Tuesday we were asked to present our Alice in wonderland project which none of us were really looking forward to but contrary to my expectations the feedback we received was very helpful. The main problem in our level is clear, It's very big and there's barely anything in it.

It feels very wide and square, we still have some key elements missing such as foliage that we were going to work on over the remaining weeks of the competition but it turns out we need to do lots more than just adding trees and flowers.

We were advised to break up the monotony of the scene by scaling the building to different sizes and making the streets less straight. I believe that we were so focused on making it as realistic as possible that we forgot to add our own art direction to it. It was good that the tutors picked up on that since it has given us a new perspective to work from.

We need to populate the scene, and make it lived in even if there aren't any humans in the level. We also need to dirty it up, it's way too clean for a city in the Victorian times!

I looked for photographs and drawings of Victorian cities and made a list of assets we could include on top of the ones we already have. Then I grabbed a couple of screenshots from our level and decided to do reasonably quick paintovers.

Looking at this image we agreed that it'll be good to have almost a vista of the city, so that as the player walks around, he would see a variance in the cityscape.

But this is as far as I got on the OTM side of work because up until today, my character project and more importantly, the reflective essay have become my priority.

As for the essay, it has been tough. Trying to reflect on my year in English is already challenging but having to write it formally and in the format of an essay was the death of me. I was lucky to have my boyfriend correcting my grammar and helping me with the structure otherwise I am not sure I would stand a chance to get a decent grade for it.

I will make a shorter and more informal version of it so you can have a go an read how my year's been so far.

And last but not least, I have successfully re-submitted my character project. Today I went into labs to put my work into K drive only to realise that the animation was broken. It was more like parts of it were missing, and I swear this things only happen to me...and I know that it is my own fault for waiting until the last day to submit it but it's still very annoying.

As well as the animation being partially broken, some of the skinning process had been lost as well and there was no way I could fix that with two hours until deadline.  I've come to the conclusion that either the file corrupted somehow or that I accidentally deleted it.

On the bright side, this time around I skinned the fingers properly so that they don't look broken! I think it took about an hour for each hand...But it was worth it as they ended up looking pretty good.

The main improvements I focused on were rigging and modelling and I changed the textures a little bit (mainly the colors). On my new concepts I changed the patterns on his clothes but in the end I decided to keep the original ones.

Having animated a rabbit I thought that a human would be easier but I couldn't have been more wrong...It is incredibly hard to capture the human gesture. Posing the character and capturing a still image is no problem  but when it is actually moving, there are a lot of subtle movements that aren't very apparent but that without them the characters don't look believable. Because of that, my animation ended up looking a bit rigid.

Well, I have to leave it here otherwise this will turn into an essay and I've had enough of that already!
I'll see if I can post a video of the animation at some point.

See you soon!

Carla.

Deadlines and more deadlines!

Hello! Firstly I'd like to apologise for not posting in a while but to be honest I have been pretty stressed with the amount of work we have been given and I focused more on that than updating this blog...

However, Uni is back and therefore I will be posting more regularly again.
I'd like to dedicate this post to my character project which I have been working on over Easter. I was given the option to re-submit it for a chance to get a better grade and how could I refuse to that?

First thing I did was to take a 3D render of my character and do a couple of quick overpaints in order to improve its overall look. Ever since I finished the project back in December I kept thinking that the textures were not working very well and now is the chance to do something about it.

I replaced the shoulder armor for a chest piece as well as making the reds more prominent. I played a little bit with the patterns on its robes and in the end I decided to go with a combination of two of them.

Due to the change on the shape of the character I had to move the UVs around, although I tried to keep the biggest parts on the same spot in order to make the re-texturing process a lot easier.
Then it was Zbrush time! I improved the silhouette of the character by simply using the move brush and then I focused on the small detail such as wrinkles, cloth folds and hand texture. One of the critiques I got was that my character didn't look Chinese enough so I focused quite a lot on the facial features such as the jaw line, nose and eye shape.

One of the biggest flaws on this project was my rig, specially the fingers. They looked broken, therefore I decided to re-do the rig but this time around I will be using CAT rig due to my previous experience with it. I also plan on having a little kung fu animation, or at least I'll have an idle animation.

I hope that my effort will pay off and that I can bump my grades up because my first year wasn't so good and I am trying to redeem myself this year.

And this is it for today, coming soon.....Is technology killing communication? This was the topic I chose for our formal presentation this year and well...I'll get into detail on the next post.

See you soon!