#6.7.2020

it’s a kunai i swear. 

Unexpected long day today.

In a beat, how was today? Very successful. Though I have to say that this has turned into less of a day’s review and more of an ‘early morning the next day’s review’ as I have stayed up through most of the night. I certainly managed to push through that block via the brain drain this morning, leaving me to be thoroughly unblocked when it came time to actually making something. True to my word I threw an entire day at continuing to progress with the Unreal Engine learning path and produce an early, yet promising, example of the work I would like to start doing. As I have stated already: (though it does not hurt to re-iterate) I have a plan with multiple phases in this regard. Phase one is to do what I am currently doing: learn the tools. Once I have been through the ‘Getting started in Unreal Engine’ and ‘Constructing believable environments’ learning paths I will take the measure of my then confidence in the engine and from there decide whether to adopt any more courses or move on to phase two. Phase two is to refine and consolidate the information I have gathered by picking out several reference pieces of art or media to recreate, respond to, or reinterperate in Unreal. From there I should have both confidence and a library of work behind me. After this I am going to attempt to put those skills to use by recreating my family home environment in Unreal ready for the Level 5 University Summer Project. For the duration of phase one I am going to use the terrace scene that I have created today as the test-bed project for all of my learning. This means that I will be iterating on a single project as I progress, hopefully ending up with a polished, professional piece of environment art by the end of the process. I feel utterly fantastic about the current project. The process of medatively building up this environment increment by increment until it began to feel like a believable space felt very much like a practice of creative problem solving, wherein each new element added would follow on from the next due to the fact that it would alter how else the ecosystem would need to function. For example, I create a cavity in a wall because the wall feels blank. I have solved the problem of the wall being blank but have created the new problem of the material excavated by a cavity needing to be represented elsewhere - in this case by creating a debris pile next to it. This was a flow state, make no mistake. I could not stop because each new problem with the scene lit the way forwards. It has also inspired me in more ways than one. As I was working, and especially when I was capturing angles for the cinematic flythrough, I began to hear the kind of soundtrack that would underpin a place like this. To that end I would like to dedicate the next day to doing a musical response piece to go with the terrace space. One thing I am not so happy about today is that I did not document any of the process I undertook to create the terrace scene. Frustratingly, this is one of the areas that I would really like to be using this journal for so I may go back and re-document my process tomorrow whilst it’s still fresh in my mind and ensure that I document properly in the future. Oh blast, I forgot to do a song review. Oh well - another time. Anywho, that’s me done for the day. See you tomorrow.

“What has made you smile recently?” Seeing a friend for the first time since lockdown began and discussing social anxiety with them, from which spawned the rather wonderful sentence: ‘socially distance for the rest of my existence’, which may quite honestly be words I choose to live by at this point.

A brief cinematic flythrough of my first, finished Unreal Engine scene.