Todd Dinius Environment Art & Animation Post Mortem

What I thought went right

The environment art and animations that I did were a bit better than I expected. I think thought I may have just settled on some of them that I still liked. The best parts I think people liked were the tar pits. Justin’s dynamic system helped with this. The way that the trees turned out I felt were nice in that they have a feel like they were prehistoric. I saw pictures and those seemed to contain trees like they would belong in a modern swamp. The gum trees and cypress trees fit into the prehistoric theme better. The caves were too cavernous and by the end I thought they should just be more of an earthen dugout in the ground with even lighting to not feel like you were entering a separate section of the game.

What I thought went wrong

Ill says first here that the delays on the art were my fault. I needed to focus more and manage my schedule better. The art I should have chosen a lot of reference art from the beginning. The way I was make most of the art was starting with what I thought was the most icon form, except for the animations for the most part. Those I knew what they had to look like and went with what I thought would fit the game. The think I wished I would have done differently the most I would have to say is that I made an iteration of all the art and just got out a quick version to show and changed it from there instead of trying to get it right the first time. Following the blog better to get things on time and just generally keeping up with updates.

The way I did iterations by the end I realized were off. I should have followed my vision more and used the comments as guide lines instead of just following them directly. I think the final version of the caves were a product of both. The trees all did not make it in the game and my vision for what ones you could jump on were different than what Tom thought. I could have redone a lot of them to have the pieces match the gum trees or have separate larger trees that hold them but I felt that I should not delay the game anymore than I all ready have. The geode caves I thought could also have had the particle system play a couple of shines or shimmers coming off of the geode to play into more that it is a shiny object.