Collaborative Project Report
- Introduction
This report is prepared based on my practical experience in a collaborative unit, Out Of Samsara, which is an interactive narrative project that was launched by five students from a multidisciplinary group, including MA Visual Effects, MA Game design, MA 3D animation, and MA Creative Computing. The report includes four main sections. The first part provides a general introduction of personal aims and objectives concerning the project. The second component offers a detailed insight into the collaborative process, including my assigned duties and tasks, leading to the discussion of the project in the third part. Finally, the third section involves the evaluation and reflection of the knowledge and experiences I gained during the collaboration units.
- Personal Aims & Objectives of the Project
The main aims of the collaborative groups have the following purposes:
- To understand the nature of collaboration and develop problems solving skills.
- To gain experience in working for a multidisciplinary group and enhance my verbal communication capabilities in English.
- To practice the knowledge about the VFX program to increase confidence in becoming a 3D artist.
- To identify the skills and knowledge, I need to improve in the future professional environment.
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Collaboration is an essential aspect of film studies, as students can gain inspiration and learn differently from each other through interactions. As a VFX student, we are expected to possess multiple abilities, including modeling, compositing, and cinematography. Thus, collaboration offers a unique chance for us to exemplify the acquired skills and conduct experiments, which focus on solving problems, such as texturing, in the developing process. Furthermore, I was keen on learning game design in undergraduate studies as my final project was based on the technique in Unity, which utilizes fundamental visual effects, such as fire, flood, and fogs, that can be easily applied in scenes. Although I chose VFX as my major, my interest was evoked most when I comprehended the contribution of Unity to the VFX industries; hence, the significance of combining Unity and VFX in course outlines. I realized the need to enhance verbal communication in English, as doing so would be essential to create a robust and professional network in study rooms and workplaces. I planned to practice English by engaging in discussion groups frequently with my teammates. Since the ideal way to discover the value of something is by test it yourself, I practiced the knowledge gained in the VFX program by testing the effects that can be realized and what else I need to learn in further courses by this unit.
Moreover, since the objectives of this project should portray “acceptance of death”the project’s content, utilized a short video to inform the storyline for the audience initially and afterward, applies iterative scenes to enable viewers to manipulate the character in scenes. The audience was expected to escape the loop scenes by given clues, although they eventually died despite their efforts to find safe zones. The scenario conveys the thoughts of “acceptance” and “samsara.” During the process of collaboration, my main duties were modeling and texturing, which is exercised by ongoing weekly tasks and feedback from teammates and tutors. My supervisor is Christos, who helped me gain considerable knowledge about blog writing and guide me on improving the appearance of my works visually.
I formulated several objectives of the project at the beginning of the collaborative unit:
- To experience the actual collaboration workflow and comprehend the responsibility for VFX artists.
- To gain sufficient practice in modeling and texturing skills and improve and become confident as a CGI artist.
- To fulfill the essence of a collaborative unit, which underscores that each member can contribute to the project.
- To explore more scenarios regarding collaboration between Unity and VFX.
- Collaborative process
The search for the appropriate partners for the collaborative project involved a series of requirements, including our motivation, interest, capabilities, and characteristics. I was considering how to constitute a group that could match Unity and VFX. Therefore, getting a partner from game design, Xinyuan, was a great fit. We came up with an idea regarding setting up an interactive narrative in Unity. My classmate Shuyang expressed her interest in the concept, and she could be in charge of post-production in Nuke, thereby, I could focus on modeling and texturing. Besides, we also found a partner from 3D animation, because we thought the project might include the character’s movements. It is essential to mention that another partner, Xiangsong from MA creative computing, rarely talented musicians who worked on the background music. In the first meeting, we introduced each other and presented our thoughts for interactive narrative, assigning duties, establishing a timeline, and making a storyboard. I learned a lot by communicating with teammates, such as the definition of level design, how to automatically do rigging online, and the software of music production. I also realized I need to learn the various term, such as IK, Controller, and Trigger, as it is necessary for professional networking.
I thought that many associate a collaborative project with communicating; however, by my experience; I realized that cultural difference is a massive issue in our team. For example, it has a different interpretation and understanding of accepting death in the East and West, which somehow incurs debates for the narrative and severely impacts collaboration at the beginning. However, we cannot afford time-wasting on contradiction, and thereby, we solved this problem by voting democratically to affirm the storyline. Meanwhile, we also discuss our process and idea on WhatsApp to ensure the conformity of collaborative development, and we built a folder on OneDrive to share what we have done. As for project development, we made a timeline that ensures each team member can finish their assigned punctually and enables the implementation of the project. Moreover, the essential part of a collaborative process is disagreement, and politeness is somehow “death of creativity,” I should boldly raise my opinion and not afraid of argument.
- Discussion of the development of the project
In general, we used one week to build the concept of the project and distribute meticulous objectives for each member. We initially ignored the difficulties for finding an appropriate back plate for composing and shooting without permission that leads to us spending much time on variation in the first two weeks. Afterward, I was assigned to build CGI scenes and was required to finish my works in February, as I should provide the models for the game guy to put into Unity, and rendered images for Shuyang to do post-production in Nuke. This experience makes me realize the importance of finishing tasks punctually; otherwise, it will significantly impact the collaborative workflow. Meanwhile, the game partner did several experiments for the level design in Unity, and the animator was rigging and animating characters in Maya. However, we got a chance to exhibit the project at Tate Modern in the first week of March, which pushes us to finish it ahead of time. The suggestions and feedback gained in the exhibition help us improve the project for the rest time. Besides, usually, it would have one or two times for meeting each week, in which we shared our options and suggestion for works, discussing the progress of further work, finding methods to solve severe problems. We also apply critical inquiry, reflection, and creative ways to identify, frame, and resolve issues and problems. In the last week, we test our project and recruit some audiences to get feedback, which helped us improved interactivity for the project.
- Evaluation and reflection
The plans allowed viewers to know about the theme of “samsara” that manipulating character in loop games until they choose the storyline of death. Yet it has some points that are not perfect in our project. For instance, the theme is conceptual, and the narrative is not definite that needs us to explain and remind clues for audiences to end the loop. Besides, some viewers suggested it is possible to apply virtual reality to increase immersive as well as interactivity degree, which might be a mistake for the project’s strategies. Moreover, as I manipulated lower renders settings to accelerate progress, but it resulted in disturbing noise in the video, I should allocate more time for rendering in further works.
Indeed, the collaboration was a worthwhile experience that corresponds both to my interests, matching Unity with VFX. During this collaboration, I undertook a wide range of tasks as follows: concept building, modeling for scenes and character, coordinating with progress, and texturing and editing the video. I was able in practice to apply skills and knowledge acquired at Visual Effects, such as texture, lighting, and modeling, which gave me more confidence in being a 3D artist in further career. I also enhance my verbal communication abilities in English via sustainable meetings and conversations with the local teammate. I gained valuable experiences on a cultural and personal level, including what the western audience thinks about death and how game software can contribute to VFX. Working for this project, I was allowed to participate in different realms such as game design and music production and know the process of collaboration, in which respect, communication, time management, contributions are essential. Furthermore, I realized that I still do more practice for texturing, including bump maps, normal maps, and roughness, and lighting regarding angle, temperature, and fall off, to create realistic texture and CGI environment. And yet the most exciting part of this collaborative unit was the insights of multidisciplinary, developing a professional network with teammates, and learning between each other.