Compiling and Documenting

Haha... the boring part of being a game artist. Honestly I'm not too thrilled that documenting of all the planning and progress made on a project has to be done. Takes me back to my GCSE days when writing reports after reports for every friggin' project I had to do. The practical part of the projects: Good Fun, writing stuff: Boo...


Let's have a run down of what is required in a piece of documentation. Concept and Planning: What I hope to create at the end of the project, calculating and determining whether it is possible to achieve. Is it going to be a character? how about a scene? What kind of assets will be included, what is it going to be about, what limits am I imposing on myself such as tri-counts and minimum framerate. Basically all the ideas and visions goes in this part of the documentation.

But what if things do go as planned? Should a problem arise as I'm working on the project it has to be documented. This basically shows any changes I had to make as I progress through the project, noting how much time has been consumed to allow for these changes so I can go and re-plan my approach. I reckon this is quite important because should I encounter a similar problem again I have something to go over which points out the steps I took, making it easier to fix or avoid the problem.

The final part is the evaluation and conclusion. Basically I have to critically analyse everything mentioned in the planning and processing. This bit here will usually involve more of my personal input, meaning I have to point out what I liked and disliked about this project and then any changes that I feel is required should I have the opportunity to redo or make amendments to.

While I haven't actually made a proper, professional documentation of any of my projects (honestly I think all the design docs I have done for Game Production have been too simple) I reckon that is the gist of all things required. Later in the third year I'll have to prepare for my FMP, which I will then have to write up a proper piece of documentation. I'm not to sure but based on examples I've got a good feeling that the planning and concepting will make up for most of the documentation. In anycase I think it's best to point out, especially to the first years, that the writing up of the documentation has to be done as you're working on the project. I find it far easier and less stressfull to do so, since I only have write a small bit everytime instead of having to write up everything in one go.

EDIT: One more thing to mention that has to go into a piece of documentaion is research. While it isn't particually important for most the projects in Game Production but it certainly will be when I have to work on the FMP. The primary purpose of the research is give the planning some foundation, ideas cannot be fully fleshed out without references to base those ideas upon. It will make the concept undoubtably more convincing as I have something to refer to as opposed to something I made up on the spot.