ECTIP Blog 5

ECTIP Blog 5

Due to overseas students we were limited to the four of us who were in person to present, as the main purpose for overseas students was research I helped take on their presenting responsibilities. By reading up on others research and properly analysing the artefact I was prepared to give detailed analysis on our project, we all shared the responsibilities evenly helping each other and communicating often when preparing the presentation. My focus areas were initial ideas, research as well as justification of the choices that we made along the project, as in was involved in all of these aspects to begin with I was able to pick up other group members work and express it with confidence in order to support the presentation.

Despite some sporadic communication to begin with, the group began to reach out more often improving the relationship between members as well as aiding each other during difficulties. Through the use of discord and google drive we were able to keep up to date with our own and each others progressed. Due to the range of different personalities and background knowledge, we were able to effectively develop the project with a broad range of creative concepts. As the project came to its conclusion I found it clear that we needed motivation for the final push, the group and I, all encouraged each other to keep working hard until the end. Following the presentation we were satisfied with the feedback we received which was supportive and encouraged the continuation of the project to make the additions that we ran out of time to complete. 

I believe working as a group was beneficial for myself and has encouraged me to approach these projects and artefacts differently. I hope to carry this on and look forward to future group projects.

ECTIP Blog 4

 ECTIP Blog 4

We began making our designated assets, mine was the scientist feature, I began attempting to model the scientist in blender but struggled due to my inexperience I struggled to develop the concept quickly. Based off of the advice of my other team members I started from scratch learning basic blender tutorials, this was time consuming but I began making progress. Despite this, bugs in the code and time constraints led to the scientist being left out, so I created a photoshopped render of a low-poly scientist to give a visual of what we could have created given more time. Instead we began focusing more on the main plan that we had developed.

From there I continued to research the science and statistics behind invasive species in order to back up the artefact and support the development of the game. The facts that appear during the game are key to getting to the point of the game, whilst also keeping the game fun and not too serious. In doing so we aimed to create an entertaining educational game that would create young citizen scientists.

My process throughout was non linear as I tend to do for a lot of my projects, however from having to learn a new skill by the end I was working in a more organised fashion starting from scratch and working methodically.