Evaluation

This project is by far my most constructive and diverse piece yet. I've used so many different techniques, theories, and more in order to get the outcome I have. this is my proudest personal work as I've culminated every piece of knowledge I've made so far even if some was lost in the process. I also believe this project has truly awakened the better academic version of myself in which I am able to work to my almost full potential. Throughout this course I was learning 3ds max for 1 year and a half. After this I decided to start using blender which I really know was a good decision. This is because throughout my learning process with 3ds max I learned a decent amount and was able to make an adequate outcome with slow but consistent progress. However, in the half year of practicing blender every practical session I have been able to greatly surpass my skills I had accumulated in 3ds max which I am very surprised by but greatly proud of. This would have to do with the fact that most software is translatable but there are large differences between. I will be looking back on this project as my big step towards a more professional perspective on research, planning, and practical.

My inspirations and research heave heavily related to my current interests in media I’m enjoying at the moment, one of which I speak of a lot is Demon Slayer and Japanese culture in general. I’m glad I looked into this as I’ve appreciated anime and action style media for a very long time, and it feels great to have output my own version of these. I wish I was able to model my own assets to truly show my ideas for the character and weapon etc. despite this I think I’ve gotten as close as possible to what I would’ve liked to make, asset wise.

I did want to recreate a lot of the feelings/ moods of the scenes in demon slayer. I believe the way they did this is through the look of the background and environments. Mainly using hues and certain locations like woodland. I did achieve this in the end quite well which I’m happy with. I used specific lighting and mist which took a few hours to perfect, but I got there eventually and its very similar to demon slayers woodland scenes which is exactly what I wanted

There are many things I would like to improve with this project but that can be said about all of my previous works before, and this mindset will continue as all work I have created and will do in the future has a timeframe and there’s always things to be improved. I would like to specifically improve my animation skills as I’m not able to make smooth and appealing movements as a lot of them look quite robotic and uncomfortable but as you can see throughout the animation, you can see me learning new techniques and perspectives in each scene as I created and rendered them one after another rather than one large block of rendering. The lightning was one of the most troublesome assets in this piece, as I found it difficult to balance the elements of procedural movements while also keeping the lightning under control to keep it where I want it to be. This also came into account when needing to edit the size and shape of the lightning which never seemed to want to work with me. As the shape of the lightning is determined by a 3d texture influencing the topology of the lightning.

to begin with, I was very excited to have such wide freedom to create what I truly wanted. as being an art student for 2 years previously to this course it wasn't very enjoyable to be told to make a personal creative outcome but be restricted by material or topic that may not have been a passionate one for me. but with this project, it was free to roam, along as it related to games development which Is a fine restriction obviously as I have a major interest in this already. due to recent enthusiasm toward anime and the Japanese culture in general I wanted to have this as one of my main inspirations for my idea. Around this time, I saw a video on the TikTok app which showed a mock-up sketch of a battle between two characters, one of which was a swordsman. this was a huge push for my idea as I now knew I wanted to make a fight scene of sorts with the Japanese culture/ design infused into it. after a few days of theory, thinking about how I would make this outcome, I then realised animating a whole combative scene between two assets going back and forth would take way more than the allocated time frame.

after some talking with friends etc I came to the idea of making a fatality-like animation. I was happy with this downgrade as it was still in terms with my interests and basically the same idea of a combative scene, but only removing the movement of the "villain/antagonist".

I knew from the beginning this would be a challenge as all the animation I have done up to this point was simple robotic movement or uploading premade animations, nevertheless, I didn’t have many issues with animating, apart from the first walk cycle. the rest of the problems are more editing models and making assets like the lightning.

it didn't take me long to start creating assets for the animation and within a few days I had one of my best created assets to date which was my "lightning katana" this is one of the best singular pieces I've ever made as I took every element into consideration. normally when creating an asset, I would cut corners like not paying attention to making true textures and making sure topology makes sense and is the most efficient for number of polys and level of details. As before this I would subdivide surfaces carelessly so there would be unneeded vertices/edges, however with this model I made sure to take care of every process till the very end while looking into research many times to make sure I was happy with the design. I did investigate story and reasoning for the blades design meanwhile, this was relating the design of the handle and hilt to why it looks that way and how that relates to electricity. When modelling I realised, I had unintentionally made the hilt look like a copper electrical inductor used in real circumstances. I thought this was cool as I could relate my design to real design choices.

Unfortunately, due to issues with server updating on the college systems, this piece and a few other more minor ones were completely lost due to the file location being the downloads folder. This really effected my work and my mental attitude as I have just lost one of my favourite models to date. It took me a day to come to terms with the changed I would need to make and the downgrades I would need to think about due to losing two weeks’ worth of practical work.

I had decided the only way to have a good creative outcome in my project while staying on time with research etc I would have to download most of, if not all the assets I would need to have the whole animation I wanted. The character was originally going to be a simple one made by myself, but after making the first katana I realised I didn’t have the level of knowledge in blender I would need to make a good outcome in the time I had allocated to making the character. Therefore, I had previously downloaded a character before the system wipe, so I wasn’t bothered about loosing the character but I’m glad I was able to look back on my creative decisions as when downloading the character again from the same site I realised there were many things I could’ve changed for the character to fit my intended setting. I added a few more assets to the character like a mask and belt as I didn’t want to animate the face due to the time I had, and I needed the belt as to connect the inevitable sword sheath to. I then went into the unwraps of the character as I wasn’t truly happy with how he looked even after adding the pieces as his colour palette wasn’t cooperating with what I had intended in the scene, I wanted most of the colours in the scene to be quite noir and unsaturated as I wanted the bright lightning to be a main interest in certain scenes. with this done I now needed a new katana which didn’t take long to find but io made sure it was as closest to the one I had made previously as possible.

Now came making the environment. I did intend on making my own environment still as I have some decent experience in this already but being in a new program and the time constraints made me curious to see what there was available online in terms of a decent sized environment. I didn’t think there would be any as there’s so much effort that goes into a whole lit scene. However, I did find quite a simple one with trees and a sky dome which I was surprised by, although even though I was able to find such a refined environment, I didn’t want all my models to be entirely someone else’s so I decided to make sure I edited as much as possible without over working it as the background wasn’t very important. I deleted the trees and foliage as they were very condensed and often would slow down the performance of my blender file. I downloaded new foliage and added them to where I need them to be. I also added a level of mist and removed the sky dome as to fit the aesthetic I desired, getting the lighting was one of the hardest things, as I was working on it for at least 2 days which is quite a while considering I needed to get this done before rendering the first scene. I needed a low mood lighting but often couldn’t get it right so you would be able to see everything needed while also making it look like its night-time.

The walk animation was by far the hardest part in the entire process. Walking cycles have always confused me which is ironic considering walking is as common as breathing. This took 3 days if not more, with editing continuing afterwards including after rendering as I had to change the pace of the walk in post-production because it was way too fast. the rest of the animation was fairly straight forward apart form making the lightning appear and disappear as you cant keyframe an object coming into a scene. I then realised I could keyframe visibility in the asset browser which helped.

The rest of the animation was pretty much smooth sailing till I needed to build the environment more to account for the horizon scene which still wasn’t hard as all I needed to do was duplicate the grass ground and edit it slightly to have some hills and change the texture. After this my animation was done.

I do believe I could’ve done more research but for this project I wanted to try and do most of it as my personal creation, however a lot of my processes related to some of my interests and common practices in animation etc, which I was able to relate to other peoples works. I do feel that my project has stayed in the direction of its intended audience throughout its development despite the challenges and downgrades have gone through. I wanted to make sure my idea didn’t change too much as I was very set on my ideas and how long it would take to produce.

In conclusion I truly am proud of this project and in the future I hope to come back to it and refine it to its full potential when I have accumulated more practical skills and ill be sure to look back on this one to show comparison of growth. I think some of the ways i could make this better are by smoothening out the animations and animating the background with wind etc effecting the leaves, Id also like to look into 2d effects to ad enthusiasm to movements with the sword similar to lines used to portray motion used in anime. One of the definate things would be to make the entire thing myself so i can claim full ownership of everything and not have to reference other peoples work.