In this evaluation, for the entirety of my Final Extended Project, I am going to cover each section of my work, from the proposal and time planner, planning, primary research, secondary research, production, the final product and finally- a final overall evaluation of the entire project. This will involve discussing each area in detail, providing information of how I believe I worked in terms of skills, quantity and quality as well as the time management that was made for it and whether I sticked to it properly or not, and then reflecting on each area of my work- providing statements of what could have been done instead, how things could have gone much better by relaying back to the time management and discussing possible issues that arose within software, structure or the quality of the work itself. It will be a self-assessment of my abilities, successions and, what I deemed, as failures throughout each section. 

 

Firstly, for the proposal and time planning that I wrote up at the beginning of the first weeks of the Final Extended Project, I worked to a minimum amount, going over the basic, simplistic idea I had that was regarding a video game trailer with the use of my conceptual art that I had planned to do for it- when I speak over the term “simplistic” and “minimum”, these are my thoughts surrounding the amount of attention that went into the proposal as there could have been more of a description for each section regarding the word count and discussing more on the reasoning behind my idea, as well as the inspirations that afflicted these thoughts of a game trailer, more plans on the research part of it all and going into more detail as to how I was going to produce said trailer with the timings and plannings for it more in depth. The same had gone for my time planning as for each section that regarded each week within the FEP schedule, there was little written about as opposed to what I can substantially complete on a regular basis, on the other hand, issues regarding personal life fell into place at an awkward time and the completion of work due for previous units was also something that I was focusing on during the beginning weeks of our project- and so planning was not as attended to as it could have been in my eyes. I know that I can do more work than what was written and so this part of the pre-planning process disappointed me quite highly. To have worked around this, taking away the personal issues that came in between my work, I could have set specific times to have worked on these sections, as well as the completion of previous work at home whilst adding more to my proposal and the time planning- being the main focus- within college itself. In future, I would make sure that this work is done much quicker as it is the first few steps of the planning process and is vital to complete, and so it is out of sight much earlier, leaving me more time to work on the planning section, drifting into research with more ease and much less stress. The initial ideas that I previously had before structuring more of my concept artwork, though, was also slightly changed from peer feedback within my survey and during the time of planning my work, I had few peers address their thoughts on the idea and that they liked the sound of it.  

 

Moving onto the second section of my FEP- this was where the planning for my game trailer began, it consisted of a simple storyboard, written up ideas that I made in my note's application on my phone and various sketches of the characters being brief concepts. The key planning stages in my development involved the illustration of various character concepts for my game trailer, helping to create a visualized image of these characters that was held within my brain to get out onto a trailer for other people to see. This meant that the key stages of my planning involved using Adobe Photoshop for the illustrations and storyboard, PowerPoint was also used as it was the main document which held said planning that I had been working on, it was also a way for me to put together a mood board- this being various images from artists which had helped inspire the idea or an ideal concept art style, in which each concept piece was taken from google, twitter and art stations from these artists. The first few brief sketches were of an okay standard- they were not anything special, however, I did produce more concepts later that were to look much more visually appealing in relation to the consecutive art style that I had adapted to. There were many pieces that were sketches that just did not fit the concept and style, and would look unimpressive compared to the other illustrations I had sketched out- realistically there was much more potential here for me as if I had worked harder during the time, I would have been able to get out more visually appealing concepts, whether these were just simple sketches for the planning or final pieces that I would have added to the game’s trailer. This difficulty in getting out more visually appealing work had quite an effect on my production, as this meant reverting back to studying other artists, illustrating from references pictures that were not relevant to improve slightly in my art skills. Reverting impacted my time management as it meant stalling other work such as the primary and secondary research and the research within the three different theories that could have been done during this time. If I could change this section by redoing it, I would make sure to practice frequently when I can in relation to studying and illustrating to improve whilst also leaving time to get out concepts and sketches for my Final Extended Project. In conclusion to that, I would most definitely work on my concept of time management to make sure that enough time is left to work on each section. 

 

Next is the primary research, this was gathering my own research through surveys and feedback which, for me, was done within SurveyMonkey. For the results themselves, which were the responses of each of the five participants of the survey, only a few of the responses were in any way helpful, this is because quite a few of them were very lacking in detail and even involved one word or two-word responses such as “sounds cool” or “no”. For example, most of the questions I asked within the survey would mean providing an answer as well as an explanation to clarify and go into detail over why the respondent picked that game or choice of colour etc. And most did not go into much detail or any at all. To clarify from this, I can determine that most of the faults were due to the lacking in responses- my questions were not on the complicated level; however, I could have addressed for the participant to do their own research for two of the questions that revolved around the conceptual art for various video games that I had listed- though I did not believe that I needed to ask participants to do this. So, I can come to terms with the fact that most respondents were quite lazy towards specific questions, and this meant that there was not as much useful information and primary research gathered as there could have been if more effort was put in. There were also only five respondents out of the maximum of ten and so this meant even less useful information being gathered. To work around this, I could have given the survey to people outside of my college, for example, friends and family that are familiar with video games and take a liking to them. For the website, SurveyMonkey, I did not particularly enjoy working with it as I was unable to add the number of questions I wanted, which was 12, and had to resort to the option of 10 as any more than this was deemed a premium feature for members only. If I could redo this, I would most likely try finding a different survey site to use as this one was biased towards premium members rather than free site users and limits you to the number of respondents you can have. I would also add more questions and give my survey to more than just people within my college, involving family and friends- getting anyone they know who might like games to give feedback as well. It would most likely be more useful this way as I feel knowing the person may help the respondent to give more detailed and helpful feedback. 

 

For my secondary research, I collected images from three different games that showcased scenes from each of their trailers. This research was used to investigate various topics such as themes, textures and prices that, most of which, relay back to the information that will be influenced by these on my video game trailer. All the secondary research was relevant towards my idea of a video game trailer as each was an investigation of the trailers themselves and would provide me with more influenceable ideas towards the structure, storyboard, layout and theme of the game trailer. Within this research I also gathered images together that were of the concept art of each game or related by being the same creators of said game, these being useful and influential towards conceptual artwork ideas and the storyboard of my trailer. I believe that, for this section, a lot of work was done and most of my time went into this part of the research providing it was most useful for me I relation to future work that I created afterwards as well as each game being related generically through the psychological horror genre. I found out from this research more surrounding the themes of each video game, delving into the various metaphorical meanings they could hold due to fanbase and critiques reviews- as some of these games, if not all of those that I researched, held parts of storyline that were unable to breakdown into simple terms and involved theorizing to understand from a wider perspective- such as the dark and eerie setting of INSIDE relaying metaphorically around capitalism, however, this game stands out as more obvious in its meaning but hides other little storylines inside it and mind-bending ending which confuses most still to this day. Going back to the useful qualities of this research, I agree fully that all was reliable as each section of this impacted my Final Extended Project in some way- mainly having a positive light for not only ideas surrounding the trailer but also the motivation of getting to it and completing my trailer. The three different theories were also mentioned and researched upon within this section and provided me with knowledge that would be useful for my artwork in relation to visuals with colour theory, the shaping and structure of my characters within shape theory and the design and layout of the game trailer itself within design theory. My decisions were also affected by this research as, as I mentioned previously, ideas were given through a bigger analysis of these three video games and created a motivational idea to add twists somewhere along the lines within the trailer and storyline for my video game itself. I have discovered that many video games hold a much deeper meaning behind the obvious standing one and that, in most cases, there is just one meaning. In relation to this point, it has enlightened me more onto the topic of theorization within the stories of video games and is now one of my favorite enigmas to both read about in terms of fan-theories and create and understand within my own perspective. If I was given a chance to change this section of my work and start over, I would put more of an analysis on the conceptual artwork that I gathered, what I feel about it and how each piece would individually affect my ideas on my story and its’ trailer. 

Onto the production of my Final Extended Project, there were many different elements that I added within this which involved both experimenting with different software such as AfterEffects, as well as gaining an understanding of editing, putting artwork together and creating various feelings within these relaying back to colour theory and frightening imagery that is used within psychological video games- also relating back to shape theory. There was also work done during this time that involved references and information surrounding inspirations that inflicted some ideas as well as practices with illustrating to improve and compromise with my art block at the time. There was also evidence of the process of various illustrations I did, both for my video game trailer, the simple concepts for it and artwork that was done during the improvement process. There were changes that were made in relation to what I wanted from the artwork, how I wanted the trailer to look and a few different illustrations of my one character, Shi, who I struggled with in relation to his design and what he should look like. Relaying back to this, many sketches that were first done were scrapped for either being under the standards of what I wanted visually or because of a lack in skill somewhere along the art part. There were also issues faced during this time with software, for example, AfterEffects that was used to create and edit an anime character for editing practices involved many issues with too much RAM being taken up- forcing the application to lag many times, especially in the process of creating transitions and rendering each of these. The application struggled so much to render the entirety of the video, getting stuck at around 15-20 seconds that I had to resort to sending it to Adobe Media encoder to render it fully this way- which took over an hour to do. This did, in the end, help as my editing skills went substantially well for my game trailer, on the other hand, due to previous issues with AfterEffects, I resorted to, instead, using Premiere Pro for the final project. Either way, I did gain more skills and understanding out of this of the application itself and improved further in my use of Premiere Pro. My methods have also changed after facing an issue in future with AfterEffects, as I made more searches within reddit and the adobe community to learn various ways of fixing certain problems within the software as well as now knowing of another way of rendering and exporting my future edits. My artwork was also improved during this time, in response to the art block that I was faced with and working around this, by practicing with various reference images, taking more time to focus on what I wanted to illustrate in my free time, studying other artists’ work as a way of improving my own and understanding various techniques and colour theory, and taking a mental break in order to get out better work that substantially improved and went well for my game trailer. Although, my time management for this section was not consecutive- mainly due to the art block and issues surrounding software that made the small elements to this section take longer than what was needed and what could have been used to focus on other work such as the production of the game trailer by gaining more artwork for it. Time management was not followed by properly due to issues outside of my work and so it was not helped- however, if I were to redo this section of my work, following the time management accordingly, I would make sure to capture more evidence of the production of my artwork, editing for both the pieces leading up the trailer and the trailer itself and more reflective feedback on each section. 

The outcome of my project ticked many boxes for me, it allowed me to view from a perspective of both myself, and my peers who viewed it that there is so much potential that I have, and my skills are not as lacking as I believed them to be, leaving me impressed and satisfied. I managed to animate, to an extent, exactly as I had thought out- minus the animation of the characters themselves- and was able to do this in software different from the one I was planning on using. However, issues were faced with and not everything was set out I the way I had originally planned, for example, the game trailer was instead done within Premiere Pro due to the countless issues faced with AfterEffects and relaying back to skills that I already have within Premiere Pro instead. Due to this, I was not happy surrounding the fact I was not able to put more effort into gaining better skills within AfterEffects, on the other hand, it did help me to discover more audio and visual features within Premiere Pro such as the audio gain, distortion effects and the reverb that all played a part in my game trailer. There were, again, issues facing the time management and the game trailer was done during the final week of the project, stating that it could have been a lot better if my timing was structured out more according to how I set out the plan and could have been much more effective with inflicting emotions of the viewers. If I was able to change this product, I would work on more artwork for it to add a wider storyline for the viewers and add better effects for the glitches within the trailer- there were also parts that were much louder than others and so I would have also made a change to that to make sure each loud section was around the same audio gain. I would also add better artwork that looked more visually appealing for the scenes within the trailer as, although I was able to get out artwork with a consecutive art style, I know that I am able to do much more than what was done. I received feedback from some of my peers, those of which saying they wanted to play the video game because of its storyline, intensity and cliffhangers- I had another state that it was unsettling- which met my goals in terms of how I wanted the viewer to feel whilst watching- and that they loved the glitches I had added- this coming from a film and TV student. This added to the checklist of my expectations as it meant I had managed to create an intense feeling for the viewer as planned for the games’ psychological atmosphere. Of course, there were errors met within this, for example, the awkward part of moving scenes and audio together within Premiere Pro, the fact that I also had to export my video to my phone to add better effects for the glitches and frightening moments within the application YouCut, and so it meant downloading the edited version from Google Drive which downed the quality slightly. In relation to these pieces of software, all mentioned, I have gained a wider knowledge of each as well as fixing some of the errors within these and will add these skills into the future work that I will do. I gained further improvement in skills for editing, my artwork and the concepts of the three theories, mainly colour and shape theory and adding each of these into my illustrations somehow, gaining emotional response from viewers of the game trailer and an overall satisfactory response from myself, and a more positive mindset from the outcome. All these skills will impact my work ethic for the future, as well as my mental health- in an improved manner as to giving me a much more positive outlook- career wise for my conceptual art skills, editing and written work, and just overall the image of myself and my work in a more positive light. 

 

In conclusion, from undertaking this project, my final thoughts surrounding my outcomes and progress as a subject specialist are extremely positive, though, of course, there can be more improvement for my artwork, I have managed to create a game trailer as well as various conceptual artwork, emotional reactions and positive thoughts from others- as of these outcomes, I believe I have improved massively compared to when I first started my course in Games Design and this final project has given me a much better outlook on myself and the work I create in order to keep making great things. My skills in art itself have improved massively and the motivation and the research done for my work are also substantially better than before. Onto my intentions for the future, and their relation to my work, I plan on becoming involved in a creative career surrounding artwork- preferably conceptual artwork for video games being character designs and possibly an indie career in creating video games themselves. I plan on continuing to make artwork after this course, whether I decide to gain a related career or not, also holding the possibility to become a freelance artist- opening my career options broadly for other people to hire me.