Week 11, Year 2: Time Lord Post-Mortem.

As you may have read last week, the final crunch of the character dichotomy project was a painful one and it left a bitter taste in my mouth. At deadline-o'clock, all I could do was breathe an enormous sigh of relief and say "at least it's over".

But while it was a tough project, perhaps the toughest yet, I took a lot from it. Below is what I handed in. Keep reading and I'll elaborate on what went wrong. And right. But mostly wrong.

When the project was set, I made a plan. A realistic, concise and thought out plan. I then proceeded to ignore it completely. Not intentionally of course, but I did not consider the process during planning. I visualized an end result, divided up my time and steamed ahead. This led to a lot of wasted time and undefined tasks, where procrastination starts to creep in.

The bulk of my time was spent modelling. While a lot of time was wasted during this stage, this was where I learned the most. During pre-dev, I decided to model to realistic DOTA 2 specifications. This involved a fair bit of extra work, but as I expected, it was a very valuable exercise and I'm glad I based my project on an existing game with realistic constraints.

Most of the shortcomings that followed were a result of rushing as I ran out of time. Everything from the texturing onwards was extremely rushed and it shows in the final result. Despite my lack of time, I could have mitigated these problems with better prioritization. Specifically, more disciplined prioritization. It seems making plans is one thing, sticking to them is another.

My end of project presentation went better than expected. I was so burnt out, I thought I'd struggle to be enthusiastic but when I took a step back and looked at the project as a whole, I remembered it wasn't all bad. 

Really, it isn't even half bad. Most importantly the concept is strong, and that shows through despite the lack of polish.

Following the presentation, I created a paint over noting the most offensive errors.

Characters have never really inspired me in the same way that environments, props and vehicles have. While things may not have gone to plan this time, hopefully I will carry these lessons forward and the following projects will be more successful.

And I'm excited for the next one. No really, I am.