Minor Submission - Reflective Statement

I feel my minor project went well and feel positive going into the major project. I decided to do this project because the idea of building the vehicles is something that interests me, and enjoyed working in the 3D world.  The challenge of designing vehicles for specific environments meant that I had to do a lot of research behind it to ensure the vehicle will work in a realistic environment with suitable materials. For example, for the lava vehicle I had to find materials which would be able to withstand high temperatures as well as being as lightweight as possible for the vehicle to be realistic for the environment. I feel that this project was largely a research project because of the amount of components and if the components are available in the environment, and if they would be able to withstand the environment.

In this project I wanted to get to the point where my vehicles could be understood in the way they work. I feel I have achieved that and I understand how my vehicles move, how they look and work within the environment. I feel that my art of represents my work well and I feel that if someone were to go through my art of they would be able to understand how the vehicles work.

Designing all three vehicles has come with its challenges but I have thoroughly enjoyed designing every one. For my lava vehicle and the spider vehicle I had done lots of sketches and scribbles to find the shape that I found most desirable, for me doing simple shapes and curves for the lava vehicle I felt I found a really nice shape and design. I feel my drawings don't always show the exact representation of want I want and if someone else looked at it they might not understand my drawings but to me I can see these in the 3D world. For the Ice Train I feel that the vehicle was built for purpose and the only way I could understand how it works is by designing it in maya and made quite a few mock ups to understand where parts would go. One of the earlier designs I created in such a way that made it impossible to put a door on the vehicle, only with trial and error did I come up with a way that the ice train worked efficiently.

For the zombie apocalypse vehicle I think anyone could have fun designing their ultimate zombie apocalypse vehicle and felt I had to think outside the box and felt I wanted to design the vehicle so it would be available to the public. I felt that having weapons that were lethal on this vehicle could have meant that in the wrong hands could be a killing machine and I wanted the vehicle to make you feel safe and not as if you are sitting in a tank.

I have enjoyed using the renderer arnold and have been getting some really nice renders. I have watched quite a lot of tutorials on how to get realistic renders and realistic car paint and how to composite your layers into after effects. It would have been nice if I got some paint tests done on spheres to prove my growing knowledge on this but look forward to taking this into the major project.

After the feedback from my interim crit, my project took a slightly different direction as I had initially planned to stick to 2D designs and research, but after my feedback I was told to start working and designing in maya.