Self Evaluation for BA1

First of all, I do feel this project could have gone a whole lot better, but I would've expected to struggle to adapt to the increased workload so quickly. Needless to say I know what to expect for the next project so that I can approach it with less hesitation next time.

For strong points, I felt I was particularly good at discovering ideas and developing them. Ideas such as the dogs being part of the 'untouchable society' and thus got all their gold from thieving and begging, or the whole Tinderbox plot being a trick set up by the possessed princess in order to free herself from captivity. I would not have come up with these ideas had I not done the research and attended the group crit sessions, of which I made sure to attend every single one so that I could get consistent feedback on my work. I also felt I was particularly strong when understanding the silhouette stage of work, where I quickly understood that the silhouettes needed to be quick, undefined work rather than 10+ minute jobs, meaning I could get many of them out much quicker than others did.

However, I felt I let myself down a little on the iteration stage. After being in one of the lectures and being shown the sheer scale of iteration work in the games industry, I know that the amount that I have done does not even compare and there were a lot more elements that I could have considered for my character, such as alternate colour schemes, patterns on various parts of the clothes as well as accessories. I could have also done with more iterations on the parts I did iterate on – I only produced 3 different designs for the kimono and, although I do like the design from the one I chose, I felt there could have been a whole lot more potential there that I missed by pinning down on a design too early.

What could I do better for next time? Create a more formalised work structure so that I know I will produce the right amount of work for my projects. The beginning of the project should be about doing research and formalising ideas, which should only take a few days at most along with having the silhouettes done. Then I should devote the main bulk of my time to doing iterations and making sure that I do them a lot quicker than what I was doing before. Although I did do paint-overs, I took too much time on them, so I should work to practice making my work more efficient and learning how to express more with less work.

Overall, considering it was my first project, it didn’t fail as much as I had been expecting. Though I do know I could’ve produced a lot more work had I known the scale of work that was to be expected out of us, I am now aware of what is needed from me in the next project.