Whalloween

This weekend I had obligations to attend to. I scheduled my deadlines to work around the fact that I would be gone on Friday and most of Saturday. In attempt to make sure my team was without guidance, I burned through my data plan a bit throughout the weekend and followed up Saturday evening/Sunday morning with everyone. Concept art is still a bit of a bottleneck that I am trying to find solutions to.

Producing Things

• Model Augher Phase 3 (1.5 hrs)
• This included receiving feedback from Jonathan, implementing the changes, preparing the file to be sent off to Miguel for UV.
• Test Augher in Unity (2.5 hrs)
• The first hour or so was spent troubleshooting the repository with Dylan. He showed me how to set it up the project on my desktop, went through best practices with me, and answered my questions. I created a test scene for future purposes in testing scale, put Augher into the project, and scaled him appropriately. Dylan then showed me how to push the project up.
  
• Model Sniper Unit Phase 1, 2
• Model Rush Unit Phase 1, 3
• Test Tank Unit in Unity
• Model Rush Superunit Phase 2
• Test Rush Superunit in Unity
• Update Gantt chart (1 hr)
• This will be discussed later.
• Establish logo
• Give report to Stefan about First Playable 

Proof of Progress

• Gantt chart
• First Playable Overview report

Foreseeing the Future

• Continuing production on the assets I was assigned as our concept art finishes them
• Move forward with cleaning up Kamikaze unit and superunit
• Learn how to import animations and use Mecanim
• Update Gantt chart
• Make cookies

Some Other Comments

Important note: Most of the items on my list are in red because I did not have the necessary materials to move forward with them. The logo was also held back because I was hoping to have a discussion with Desiree before drafting up ideas since she will be developing our brand with Alex and me.

At the beginning of the project, Professor Wagner mentioned how being a producer was crisis management. So far, in a self-evaluation of myself, I've been managing some of the issues in a reasonable manner. In addressing the issue of concept art being a bottleneck, I approached Jonathan, our game designer, with helping out in giving more guided direction since he has a specific vision of what he wanted. I asked him for several documents detailing what he wanted each of the shared tower to look like and to include reference. This coincides with how Henderson wanted to structure his work and helps Desiree out in generating more ideas. He delivered the documents in a timely manner, which Ryan commented positively on.

Despite that, concept art is still a bottleneck. However, the issue is slightly understandable as we are trying to expedite the concept art process in a much shorter time frame. Henderson and Desiree have been very proactive in asking for feedback, and the team responding with just as much vigor. While we push through with the concept art, I finished off the model for Augher, allowing the rest of the team to continue. I will be sending off Kamikaze unit and superunit as soon as I get more feedback. This will give enough work for Jonathan, Miguel, and Kai-Lin.

To push the aesthetic development even more, I structured the upcoming art team to address the environment. This pushes up the environment by several weeks. We are going to move with our established tone, review the narrative, and get a jump start on picture the entire game. Also in the meantime, the non-concept artists can work on more technical aspects, such as creating MEL scripts, exploring particle effects, etc.

In the face of this hurdle, I will continue to find ways to help bring the concept artist up to speed without overworking them. In addition, I want to also increase the productivity of the rest of the art team so that everyone is working as hard as our concept artists!

Anna