Having finished my project so far and completed the majority of my work and feedback I and to create a final evaluation of my project, how things went, what people thought and all the different techniques and ideas I worked on and created. I am going to be breaking this down into different sections and discussing how I thought each of these little sections went.

Comparing my final project to my proposal:

I think that my proposal is still very true to my final designs. I stated in it that I would be creating two new operators for Rainbow Six Siege and these would be Norwegian. This is something that I have stuck to very well and is what I have literally created. I then mentioned how for the project that I would be basing these characters off the FSK. Although I did some research into the FSK aside the weapons and uniform these two operators weren’t to true to life. However they look like they could definitely be a part of it all and I still think they slot in nicely. I also stuck to linking them to Norse mythology (Thor having an electric grenade and Goliath’s icon being a Viking Helmet.) I stated in the proposal that I would be creating fact files along with the operators eights, height etc but I decided in  the end to not include this. I didn’t want to clutter up the website and take away from the characters themselves and felt that overall the final product was better without it. Also with the way I ended up creating the two operators I didn’t feel it as necessary to ad height and weight as I presented this through the designs of the characters. I also decided not to create graphics for their guns as I simply modelled them onto the  characters. I believe it is much better to show than tell which is why I went down this route. Although I did post designs onto Reddit I have made my final thing on Wix as this is a great tool for making simple websites. I then put this on Reddit and asked for feedback on the way it ran and looked.

Context:

my context was a really great start to my project and I felt that it couldn’t have gone to much better. I chose a variety of different websites, images, characters and games to look into and built up a great collection of potential ideas. My first steps were mind mapping out ideas. I knew I wanted to do a project based on Siege and I felt this was a great chance to be creative. I used Coggle for this mind map of DLC ideas and thought of gadgets, countries etc. I also looked into Siege and the way they set out their website and the way their icons look so I could base my design on something like that. I looked into concept art and images which inspired me and these really helped influence my real final design. I think that the images I found were great and ended up helping out a lot. I also looked into colour and how it can really help change the way something is viewed due to reception theory and semiotics. I loved the idea of using a lot of blue to link to the ocean and snow and this was really fun to experiment with. In the future I may consider other colours to use which might work like yellow, red and others. Finally I also looked into past DLC operators to help inspire me and understand the way they are designed, why they are designed that way and what that means for me. This made the final designs fairly true to the game as I had learnt about their design process which helped influence mine.

Research:

I did a fair amount of research for this project, some primary, some secondary. Research is really valuable to educate and help me understand the way my project should be created. primary research helps me to rework parts of my project which aren’t liked, modify or add new additions to designs and help me know what I could do better in the future. From what I have received I really want to use a much bigger variety of colours and try to create something much more realistic. My final designs were really good and much better than the previous ones but still weren’t as ultra realistic as some people probably expected. Secondary research was really useful for gaining knowledge on areas I wasn’t to certain on. Examples of these are Affinity techniques, concept art, legal constraints, referencing and much more. for me personally secondary really proved valuable especially when it came to working on my designs as well as making sure I was aware of what I could and couldn’t do in terms of legalities. It also allowed me to reference photos and websites which again is important for lawsuits.

Goliath and Thor icons:

I was seriously happy with how these turned out. Due to my research on the operator icons in game they looked very realistic and really looked like they could belong in Siege. Thor’s icon was a great design, the massive coils of electricity making it chaotic like Thor as a character. The electricity also of course links to the Norse god Thor (the god of thunder) and I thought this was quite a clever touch. I also liked the colours I used, they were bright and glaring and I thought the background was a good choice of colour to. The Goliath icon was also really great. I especially liked this one because of the Viking helmet I added onto the design. I added a lot of different detail into the helmet to give it some character and the addition of the explosion was really great to show that he was tough and truly on the front lines. I liked the colours I used here but in the future I may make the explosion colours a little darker as they were very bright and out there even for Rainbow Six Siege. I think toning it down a little may help it fit in better in the project. I think the size of these icons also turned out really nicely and I am happy with the look of it. the community enjoyed them to and thought that they were really great which was awesome.

Goliath and Thor version 1:

My first designs which I came up were really disappointing for me. At first it was a real struggle to decide what went wrong but I eventually figured out what made these operators a bit of a failure. Ultimately this came down to the bodies of the operators. They were just not human and didn’t look anything like a person. I don’t think the final design was effective for either characters, especially Goliath. he looked very bland and boring in terms of colour for one. The layering technique does work but it just looked dull and strange on his model. His hands also looked really odd. They weren’t gripping the helmet properly and didn’t look real at all. The proportions were all off and didn’t resemble a legitimate hand. I wanted to improve this and work on it so I knew I want to restart the practical side anyway. Goliath’s helmet also looked really strange and I personally wasn’t to keen on it’s look. It looked more like a fish bowl than a protective helmet and for me personally I just needed to rework it. It also didn’t look very symmetrical and was fairly uneven which again wasn’t suitable. The beard also looked odd and I didn’t believe that it worked well at all. Thor was really strange. His nose for a start was seriously off. It looked really unnatural and didn’t blend into his face at all. It was far to cartoonish and i didn’t like its aesthetic. The mouth also turned out really strange. His teeth didn’t fit into his mouth properly and I disliked the colour and thickness of his lips. His uniform was also just strange. It didn’t look like a uniform a soldier would wear and was simply just a stripy top. The hand was ok and I ended up using it later for my final product. I’m glad I created these designs first as I could really reflect on them and the way they looked and then create new designs based upon these.

Thor and Goliath final designs:

These designs were 10x better than the previous two. They were more human, their proportions were more realistic, they looked cooler and capable of existing in war and looked powerful and intimidating. I decided to make these characters full body. I wanted the viewer to see their full body and all the different details and to give them a good idea of what the character resembles and hat they do in game. I also added backgrounds to these characters to add some more detail to their environment and the new map oil rig. Little details like shotgun shells on the floor or safety notices on the wall were really effective in adding character to the scenes. I also really appreciated the body shapes I created for this project. When putting time into the body shape and considering the anatomy properly I got a really great result and was so happy with the way their shape turned out. I tried to use a fair amount of blue in the project as this is often associated with snow as well as ice. It is also present in the Norwegian flag which I also added onto my designs. There is a massive improvement between these two designs and the ones above and I am really pleased with how it ended up going. They are so much more realistic, crisp looking (due to the outline) as well as more details such as the smashed window and railings.

Audience Feedback:

I was really happy with the feedback I received off the project overall. It really helped me to evolve and work on my project and the community really helped me to change elements and work on certain others. I believe that the audience feedback really changed my project and my vision and I’m very grateful for the Reddit community and their interest in my project. At first I created google forms to help the community decide the way the project went and what I would create. This was really effective to inspire me and get the opinion off everyone else. The development of my project really came down to the community such as colour, aesthetic, font etc. Reflecting on my work and what I had created was really important of course and making sure that the audience were involved was amazing and they really did help to shape the project and help me develop my skills and ambition.