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KickBack - Sprint Review 2

Sprint 2 - Kick Back

My name is Kyle Ramser, and I am currently working as a 3D Artist on the game Kickback. Kickback is a 3D platformer using a pogo leg and a shotgun leg to traverse, and the art style is low-poly and simplistic, much like Risk of Rain 2. We just finished our second sprint of the project, and while it started off a bit rocky, we ended up pulling through very strongly in the end.





Starting with the difficulties that I had during this sprint, the whole team, including me, started off a bit slow, but with some communication and encouragement from our producer, we were able to get back on track. Also, while there were fewer than in the first sprint, I did have a few modeling issues. Creating the forklift model took up a lot of time, and I had to constantly fix ngons and move vertices around to make the model look more natural. This card ended up taking me a bit longer than I had expected it to, but in the end, I think it was well worth it, and the model turned out looking great. The only other card that took a bit more time than expected was the solar panel, because in theory it was a simple model, but putting in all the cuts and extrusions to give it depth and make it easier to texture well ended up causing a lot of ngons and some strange issues when trying to bevel. In the end, though, it ended up looking good and didn’t take an absurd amount of time out of my sprint.




So far, I think the game itself has been coming together really well. I was able to complete a good amount of models and all of my UVs this sprint, and I think they all ended up turning out very well in the end. I was able to complete the models for the solar panel and the forklift, all of the pieces for a modular building, as well as UV maps for all five of my previous models. I was by far the most proud of the forklift model, as when this was pitched, it was definitely a daunting task, but in the end, I couldn’t be more proud of how it turned out. Even though I did put this model in my difficulties section, it was less so because it was a problem, and more so because it was a relatively difficult thing to model, and I ended up learning a lot about efficiency when modeling and how to reduce the number of problems that I have when creating complex, multi-part models like this in the future.




So overall, definitely more positives than negatives this time around, and I think I picked up the pace a lot from the rocky start that I had during the first sprint. This doesn’t just go for me either; our group ended up completing over 100 cards in the end, with me doing my fair share, and I am incredibly excited to see how our game turns out in the end. Next sprint, I am planning to start work on textures so that the team can get the basis for what each material should look like, and we can start implementing our models fully into the game.

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