Black Channel - Major Project

In our final year of Creative Media Production, we spend the entire year working on a project with other students. The projects must be pitched to clients and our teachers who will act as supervisors. I joined a project called Black Channel, which is a narrative based video game. I have been working on Black Channel as a VFX Artist.

My decision for joining this project was very difficult because I was torn between a film project and this one. I was comfortable doing VFX for film but I had never done VFX for games before, so it was quite scary. The reason I chose this project was because I wanted to challenge myself and I thought it would be a great opportunity to push myself to learn VFX for another type of media.

Now that I have been working for Black Channel for many weeks, I am very glad I made the decision to join this project. All my team members are very helpful/supportive and I have already learned so much so quickly. I had never even used Unreal Engine before this project. I have learned how to make my own materials, textures, normal maps and particle systems/emitters. I have been using the Niagara plugin to create most of the FX. So far, I have made sparks, blood splatters, steam, shooting stars, ambient particles, dust particles, galaxy spirals, airlock decontamination spray and water, and I have created my own custom space sky box. I am looking forward to learning much more while I work on this project and I am proud of myself because I have had to learn all of this on my own. There are no other VFX artists on this project so it puts a good kind of pressure on me to try my best and try lots of different methods.