Post-Mortem

The set of assets I’m most proud of for this game was surprisingly the items for the schoolroom minigarme. It consists solely of desks, chair, and backpack (theres a hook on the desk you can hang the backpacks from!), but I had a lot of fun modeling them, and thought they came out pretty well. I also had a lot of fun making the microphone (very tiny in scene but either way) in the boxing mini game, but that one took more time making than the classroom items.

Aside from the cute classroom assets, my job during this project was to create the 3D models for the game. Since we decided to mix Val’s amazing 2D work with the 3D things, this started out with creating some foreground items that could help make the scenes more 3d, or take the brunt off of drawing 23 desks when I could make one and copy paste it. Specially useful on mini games with foreground items like the boxing mini game, as having to figure out the layering for that would have been a mess otherwise. After that I was tasked with creating the 3D models for Pipimi and Popuko, and later animating them as well as some background characters/animals. 

My teammates seemed to have a better grasp on how long 3D modeling a human would take than I did, which was surprising, as I always seemed to assume it would take much less than it did. So I think that would be what surprised me the most. I also was slightly surprised by how the little sound effects tied everything together in such a fun manner, and have to keep in mind that perhaps I should do the final pass for animations in-game as they are connected to code, since it is difficult for someone else to know exactly what I wanted from them. This is something I have to think about further, since figuring out someone else’s code to implant the animations at the right time and with the correct triggers is complicated (specially if annotation is loose) but having someone who maybe has written and understands everything in the code but now how I’d like the animation is equally complicated.  Everything else seemed to be pretty expected, since we checked in with each other often and talked about the problems we were running into a lot, so no one was caught blindsided. 

At the beginning of the project we had more aspects to figure out and get used to, such as who did what, how, and how we would keep it all connected. There was also a lot of problems with merging scenes for a good two weeks. However I think we worked through the project pretty well and found a balance and pacing that worked for everyone which was nice. For future projects on my end, it would’ve good to keep in mind everyone’s standards for things since I think that can lead to a lot of unspoken conflict. However that I noticed our team worked trough this not too violently. Any conflicts that I really thought affected the project as a whole came from my own ideas on what my work should look like. Being the first time I 3D animated meant everything did not at all look like what I wanted it to look in my head, which lead to some frustration and some coaxing from my teammates that it was fine and I should leave what I was working alone and move on to the next piece. However, I think this will be lessened once I become more comfortable with 3D animation on my own time.

Overall I had a lot of fun with this project and working with the teammates I worked with. I’m really glad I ended up on this team, with this topic, and with the method we decided to implement it in. 

💖🌱