Week 22 Feedback session

I had a feedback session from 2 industry folk: Alan Mealor and Luke Worrall.

I will do a side by side of my old version of the level and the newer version of the work.

Older level screenshot

Newer level screenshot

New level screenshot with paintover key: Luke: Orange - Alan: Blue

Overall Feedback:

The level is good so far, but it looked a bit stylised, so the aim of the feedback was to fix this issue.

If I was going for a more stylised look, it would have worked, but for my portfolio, I wanted something more towards realism.

Luke's Feedback:

Luke's feedback (In orange) mainly revolved around the lighting and lack of higher frequency detail.

In the older screenshot, the more noticeable difference is the change in lighting, he said that even though it was nice to have distinct contrasting colours with the current palette, he said to make it a little less 'utopian' it would be best to make it more overcast.

The examples he gave were of game lighting scenarios, noting that there are very strong shadows along with bright highlights.

I tried my best to replicate this without going too overboard, as when I turned up the lighting intensity or post process exposure, it ended up washing out the scene, so I tried to up these values without making the scene look washed out.

Here is an example he took of the sky, where it is seen as overcast. Albeit, more grey, but understandably so, I can see why the sky needed to be more uniform rather than blue in order to get a slightly more grungy looking level.

One of the final pieces of feedback was to add more high frequency detail - for example, I decided to add supporting pillars to the buildings, as most Victorian factory reference I looked at consisted of some sort of structural integrity. Also coming back on to the philosophy of small, medium and large details, it was suggested for the goods in to include some smaller retaining planks (highlighted in orange).

Going off the previous philosophy, the whole building would be big detail, smaller planks and cross sections would be medium and bolts would act as small detail.

Alan's Feedback:

When talking to Alan, a lot of good points were made. One of these points was the level looking a bit too kit bashed. In the original, I had green sills running along the perimeter of the building, which when compared to references we got, including factories in the Albert Dock in Liverpool, such motifs were not visible at all.

So we decided to get rid of these green sills, except the one at the bottom, as it looked like it came off the shop.

Another piece of feedback was insetting the windows - this was a good shout. Furthermore, he told me to ditch the triangular windows as the shape language was competing with the very square nature of the scene, which I agree with.

After insetting the windows, he said that using green was understandable as it was very common in Victorian Britain, however, he said try white windows instead and after looking at references, I can see why this works.

This next piece of feedback had been laterally agreed by most people who viewed the work and that was to shrink the Quoins (white corner bricks on the side of the building) as the previous ones looked too chunky for the scene.

One final piece of feedback was to add bunting - I showed Alan my previous paintover of the scene, where I added a telegraph pole with the bunting flowing from the lamppost to the pole, but he said this would have been too obstructive.

So as a way to guide the eye, Alan suggested I put the bunting across the goods in section of the level. As the main focus was towards the shop area, where the bulk of the information was leading the viewer/player.

Given that the shop was interactable and you could enter, this part made a lot of sense to me, as you want to guide the player to the most important part of the map.