I'm taking a break from modeling right now to write this blog, which is a nice change of pace, but it still means I'm looking at a screen and I haven't moved much from my desk in the past eight hours. I think my eyes are bleeding.
It's hard to give progress updates at this stage, especially when I'm so exhausted, because a lot of the work I've been doing is conceptualizing and is focused around narrative. The storyboards and animatic feel like a huge waste of time, especially when the cinematics for my game are so unimportant to the project as a whole. I indulged in my guilty pleasure and spent all day working on the spaceship interior instead of more pressing (read: important) work. Looking towards the rest of the semester, I'm already painfully aware of how little time I have left. It's all starting to feel very overwhelming, especially without the ability to create concrete lists of things I need to do; it's a waste of my time to list out a bunch of different sea weed and coral that I need when I don't have a concrete vision of the levels. And I don't understand unity enough at this point to know what I can and can't do in it.
And oh BOY, I don't want to even talk about the otter rig. For a 75 dollar rig, it's pretty shit. Pair that with the fact that I apparently have no idea how rigs, deformers, constraints, or hierarchies work. I had to spend days trying to just add antennas and fix the mesh so that his paws can bend without twisting up like a candy wrapper - days that could have been spent on modeling/texturing/animating. I can't judge if I'm behind, but with my focus on things like storybords and breaking rigs, I feel like I'm not where I'm supposed to be at this point. It's frustrating to come to these roadblocks that I didn't see coming; who knew I was still so bad at rigging. Thankfully, the spaceman was more gentle with my already fraying mind. Mixamo has a great auto rig feature, and I was able to find a script that added the controllers for me. I haven't actually messed around with it yet, so next week I might be back here saying that everything's gone tits up and the rig is completely broken (knock on wood).
Working with my team has been great though; they're really keeping my spirits up. The project lead is extremely organized and our production studio professor had very little to critique with our planning and organization. Fitting into sprints has been a time; I'm finding that I tend to work outside of a tight schedule depending on my mood and energy levels, which means I bounce around a lot. The fact that I need to be creative and inspired to work on something means I can't work on animations a week straight or model a single game area without pulling my hair out. Whoops, sorry team.
Now that we're (nearly) done with storyboards and narratives, I'm more willing to work on the project. 2D work is a painful chore, especially when I have to be considering composition and story and all that jazz. However, modeling, texturing, and animating allow me to fall into a rhythm that isn't as mentally exhausting and I can almost have - dare I say it - fun.
With the semester trucking along, it's been harder to ignore the qualities in myself that need reflection. This game is an incredible amount of work; last year's film pushed me to my limit, and now I need to go miles farther than that if I want to meet my expectations. It meant making difficult decisions, like dropping my 3D character creation class since it was really starting to affect my health. I don't want to admit it, but I won't ever be able to handle 12 hour days, and maybe I won't ever be able to take a 3 hour lab at night. Rigging is frustrating and upsetting, and although I want to learn it, I can't let a class like that affect my investment in Return to Otter Space. Maybe I'll take it again one day, but until then set driven keys will remain a mystery.
Let's touch on substance painter and texturing for a minute. I haven't really been able to break into substance painter, and the idea of having to learn a whole new program is a daunting task, but if I want the game to look good I'm going to have to just bite the bullet and learn it. Although my fine art skills are shriveling like grapes that were knocked under the microwave, I still have innate abilities from all those years agonizing over vases and fruit bowls. I know once I learn SP I'll be able to use what I learned from traditional painting and fall back in love with the feeling, but first I have to drag myself through tutorials to learn how the hell to use masks. Ugh.
I have no idea if there is any coherence to what I'm saying, or if what I'm writing is even important or constructive. Now that I know people are going to start reading what I put on here again, I'm pretty worried that I'll be institutionalized if I don't rein myself in a little. Going through last year's blog, it's hard to pinpoint exactly where I devolved into a sad, crazy puddle, so this year I'm going to explicitly say when I reach my breaking point.
It's right now.
Like, it's only the 3rd week and I'm already gone.
F.
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