Return to Otter Space started off as a final project for Script Writing and Storyboarding, but I fell in love with the idea and decided to develop it into a full game for my junior film requirement.
That's a full game with two in game cinematics in 14 weeks. It was ambitious. . . REALLY ambitious. In the end it wasn't what I expected it to be, but I don't regret any part of this project because it was an invaluable learning experience. It wasn't my magnum opus; it may even be the least successful project I've done to date, but through the long nights and heart ache, I faced challenges head on and gave it every ounce of energy I could spare. If nothing else, I learned what it meant to fail, how to react maturely to that failure, and how to analyze the mistakes I made to better prepare for them in the future.
That's not to say I wasn't successful. I made models and animations that are portfolio worthy and the expectations I had put on myself had been met to my satisfaction. I had been really lucky meeting Ardin Interactive and Db Creations; they gave me a near perfect working environment and team dynamic, so Return to Otter Space had crept up on me and I had trusted that my teammates would get things done without me needing to check up on them all the time. We had a team lead, but I was so busy with the art I didn't realize he wasn't putting in the work that he had agreed to when he accepted the position, creating a compounding effect that I hadn't noticed until it was too late to fix. I also hadn't accounted for sickness, injuries, and the software breaking on us; because I was so invested in the project, I was ready to work through breaks and illness and anything else that would come up if need be, but I should have never put that expectation on the rest of the team. Going into my thesis, I'm more aware that back up plans and adding in time for errors to occur in the production schedule is imperative to a successful project.
I struggle with perfectionism, so allowing others to see my WIPs and imperfect work really put me out of my comfort zone. I didn't do it enough, so I didn't benefit from critique as much as I could have. Just calling Return to Otter Space a completed project still makes me uncomfortable, but I decided that it's better that I show off what I was able to do, as opposed to burying it deep within my hard drives and not have anything to present as a result of all my hard work.
Without further ado, Return to Otter Space:
Comments