KickBack - Sprint 4

KickBack - Sprint 4

My name is Kyle Ramser, and I am currently working as a 3D Artist on the game KickBack. KickBack is a 3D platformer in which you use your pogo stick and gun legs to traverse a dreamlike landscape and defeat enemies. We just wrapped up our fourth sprint, and this was by far the most productive one for me, with the least amount of problems. In all, I was able to complete 21 cards this sprint, which was actually more than what was initially assigned to me at kickoff, so I am very proud of the work that I did.

Finished forklift asset.

Finished crate asset.

Starting with the few problems that I encountered this sprint, when trying to clean up the models for the store room, I realized that there were a lot more problems than I had thought. On a lot of these models, I began to UV them, thinking they were good to go, but I ended up finding out while UVing them that there were faces and vertices that I hadn’t caught before. This ended up wasting a lot of my time since I had to go back and fix them, which in turn meant that I had to restart the UVs. Other than this, though, everything else this sprint was a huge positive.

Finished boulder assets.

I was finally able to finish all of the cleanup that I had and got the building finished, which means that next sprint, I will be able to texture the building and have that fully out of the way. Besides this, I was also able to texture all of the work that I had done up to this point. This includes models that I had done, like the forklift, crate, and solar panel, as well as two new boulders to be placed around the map that I modeled, UVed, and textured.

Finished cone asset.

Finished solar panel asset.

On top of all of this, I was able to UV all of the pieces of the skyscraper that I had made last sprint. This was generally pretty easy to do, but there were some issues with the model that I hadn’t noticed previously. This did not take very much time to fix, though, and I was able to complete all of these UVs relatively quickly. This means that through all of my 21 cards, I was able to complete the storeroom window cleanup, the storeroom roof cleanup, the roof gap cleanup, the UVs for the storeroom doors, walls, roofs, windows, and gaps, as well as the UVs for the walls, trim, roof, and AC unit for the skyscraper, and UVs for the forklift, and texturing this, the solar panel, the cone, and the crate. On top of all of this, I also modeled, UVed, and textured boulders one and two.

Changes to the "roof gap" model to make it 
closed at the edges and modular.

Overall, this was by far my best sprint to date. I was able to complete all of the work assigned to me, as well as some extra tasks tacked on top. This project has shown me how helpful it is to have a producer and designer who know exactly what they want from you. Some of the cards were sent back to me this sprint that needed a few tweaks to look exactly how they wanted them to, which, in the long run, ended up helping me tweak my future textures and models to get it right in the first submission. I have had an absolute blast working on this project with these amazing peers, and I am excited to start the next sprint and even more excited to see how our game turns out at the end of the process.