Hello!
About a month ago I started a “one scene a week” challenge to create from scratch a complete project in 7 days. My original goal was to do this until the end of the year, but I am having doubts about my progress so I was hoping to get some feedback on the four scenes I’ve done so far. A little background on me - I have no artistic background whatsoever, and I started learning Blender in early August 2017. Did a few tutorials and experimented a bit, but I felt like I wasn’t getting anywhere, so I challenged myself to come up with an idea for a scene and do it in week. The deadline definitely helped me stay focused and put the time/work in, but it also forced me to make tough decisions about each scene as I’m sure you’ll notice in the images below.
The most important thing I’m looking for in feedback is whether or not you think I have potential and if I should continue pursuing Blender. I’m still at the stage where I don’t know what avenue I want to go down (architectural, character design, game assets, etc), but my ultimate goal would be to pursue a career. Critique on each scene would be fantastic too so I can learn what I’m doing wrong/right if I do continue along. I’ll try to keep the rest of the post brief but I will include a few thoughts on each scene.
Week 1: Island
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByNl90odIwoednJTQ1haWW1wMUk
(I had to attach this as a google drive link because the forum only lets me attach 3 items to a post)
This was supposed to be a sunset over an island scene with the sun setting on the right hand side of the scene. I know the water doesn’t look right and the island mostly looks like it’s made of sand and dirt.
Week 2: Creeper Hunting
Out of the four scenes this is the one I think I did a pretty good job on. I ran out of time while working on the LEGO minifig so I had to do a really quick shirt and belt texture for him that looks pretty bad.
Week 3: Supernatural Anti-possession Amulet
Except for the symbol, this scene is pretty boring. Unfortunately most of the week was spent working on the symbol, so I had very little time to model the room and candles and such. It was REALLY hard to get the lighting to look how I wanted it (I was going for a very low light, candlelit mood with just a tiny bit of moonlight coming in from the windows)
Week 4: Alley
My original plan for this was to have my LEGO minifig sort of peaking out of the light doorway with his dagger, to kind of make it like a Halloween-ish horror scene. Unfortunately I think I took on too big of a project for my current skill level, at least in terms of getting it done in a week. I spent a huge amount of time just modeling the alley and the (few) assets to flesh out the details. I also made a massive mistake at the start by not using real world scale. Because of the FOV of the camera and the way I started, the street ends REALLY far out into the distance. This caused me major headaches. Some major problems with this: no debris/trash on the ground, far too many sharp 90 degree edges, materials are really bad especially the buildings (no signs of wear/dirt/grime/etc).
Final thoughts:
The alley scene was my most recent one and this is the one that has really got me questioning if I should continue to learn Blender. As I was modeling it I thought, “Hey this might actually look pretty good when I’m finished.” Once I got to materials and lighting, it was more like, “I have no idea how I’m going to make this look good even for a beginner.”
Thank you for taking the time to read my post and provide feedback!
-James