Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

• This whole idea and sequence is a lot of fun, especially with the Demon arm. There are a large number of moving parts with VFX, and performance beats, and gameplay purpose – you tackled each one in a sensible way, and kept it cohesive. You rightly point out a few areas to polish – the particles are simplistic and obvious; the modeling should be cleaner; the animations could be tighter - but the presentation, as you have it, is in a clear representative state. Your preliminary methodology worked for breaking down the purpose and delineating the moments. However, it seems there were some points you hit obstacles on specifics - where you settled on a technique but found it wasn't the most efficient, or it admittedly slowed you down (example : timelines). As you mention, this was a learning experience on Blueprints, so I imagine this can be a good foundation to refine your workflow. Adding Concept Art or moodboards would have helped solidify your idea in the early stages. To turn a critical eye, one adjustment that would make this more impactful would be a more localized power-up, where it stays closer to the character's hands, or the heart-hand connection. You describe your decisions in expanding this to the full arm & including a showery particle system (“Pokeman stat change”), but the danger is that spreads it out too much, and detracts from the player's focus. It would also be nice to revisit the materials on the 'demonic opening' object. The approach to the geometry works well & is an effective simple technique; the only improvement would be better blending or an opacity map closer to the lava veins – since you showcase this effect on top of several varieties of floors. Overall – a neat idea visually and for gameplay, and a clever way to build the total sequence.
• The mechanics of trading your health for a gameplay perk are quite strong. Be careful that the execution does not stall your game flow. There is quite a bit of time you take the player control away for too long. VFX wise always remember the granularity gradient. You particles should vary a lot more in size (very much smaller to about where you are now). This helps with the scale of you effect and makes sure everything sits well in the world. Nevertheless, you've shown a promising idea, just needs a bit of polish to make it great!
• This is a really creative idea and has a really great idea. You have taken on a lot of work to make this work, making the effect fully functional shows a high level of technical aptitude with UE4, however this may have also taken important time away from polishing the effects and exploring different ideas. The documentation seems to be missing mood boards and references, you talk about dark souls but there are no visual images to back up and present the ideas. Its good also to plan some of the effects in drawing to get ideas before starting to make them in engine. It can help even if you are not a great drawer just to get ideas clear in your mind before taking time to make them. You can also add themes and colours to your documentation to make it unique and more interesting. Using coloured background or coloured titles and choosing a font. Continuing this theme in the game UI or title screens of your videos is a good way to make everything look a part of one project and create a brand that you use for each piece of work you create. You have used different techniques to achieve the final result, using meshes, blend shapes and particles. You have also animated elements showing a diverse set of skills. I really like the idea and with a bit of work this could be a really awesome and unique portfolio piece. I like the idea of tearing our the souls, however perhaps it would be really cool if the character actually pulled out its heart and offered it? You could have the heart beat in the characters hand before being offered. This would be a little clearer than the souls and likely read clearer. Alternatively you could use an effect similar to the dementors in Harry Potter when they suck out the souls. It might be nice to add some glow or extra effects when the MP gets added to the character to emphasise this effect and also add more show to this element. Perhaps a little shockwave and glow with some little glows rising and swirling in the wind from the area.
• hi KRONOS, First, you do an amazing work on this ! You make .exe and i appreciate that ! (you just forget a quit button). Overall your effect is pretty nice, you have mesh, shader, particle. You can improve your timing, specially when the evil hand closing. Yours sparks are pretty big and simple (the uniform scale is blow up). Nice job ! LOWYS Clément Ubisoft vfx artist MONTREAL
• Hello, i would say to improve the VFX and the idea, have more research about timing, states and storytelling, also styles. You can add different shapes to represent mana not just sparks for example :). Another thing, is to refine the animation poses so the player can understand that is an offering, and the character is gaining mana, the blending between them is too strong and the main poses from the blocking are a bit blurry.