The Lab Rat Jigsaw

It was a weird time to be a member of Lab Rat Games. We had but a few days until our personal deadline and everyone was getting irritable. However, when I stopped to think and remembered that the real deadline was over a week away, we were actually well ahead of schedule. This didn't stop people from bickering however. Harry was nowhere to be seen and hadn't uploaded any of the animations he had been working on for the best part of two months. He also wasn't answering any of us on the Facebook page when we were asking for a progress report. This was just the first sign of the problems we were about to have. James had started his work late and was really feeling the pressure of completing the game backgrounds on time and to a high standard. After all, the backgrounds required a lot of technical skill to make look as good as he got them to in the end, and he has no intentions of becoming an artist. I don't want to go into too much detail here out of respect for my team, but words were exchanged between members of the group, including myself. It was heated and certain people's frustrations were clear to see. It is safe to say that our team is like a jigsaw with some important pieces missing and we have had to fill the gaps with pieces that don't quite fit. Although they have done the job so far, they don't particularly feel comfortable there. We all felt like this in one way or another.

It felt bizarre to me that even though we were ahead of schedule and pretty much ready to start reviewing our work that we had such a substantial break down in communication. After many discussions on how to tackle the backgrounds and just generally chilling the hell out, James got the backgrounds for the game finished. They were also above any sort of standard we were expecting. In just a few days he really mastered Photoshop and we have these backgrounds to show for it.


The mechanical Dimension


The Void


The Doodle/Sketch Dimension


The Biscuit/Candy Dimension

These were great and this left James with just some pages to do for the GDD. Remember, that I took full responsibility for the GDD, so if James didn't do the pages then It'd be me that took the blame. I knew he'd get them done though so I wasn't worried, even if my balls were on the line.
In terms of the issues we were having with Harry, at this point they were still unresolved. However, our tutor Ben told us that animations weren't that important for this deadline and that we should really get started on the Art Bible. This is all well and good but we wanted to see what Harry had to show for the time we had been nagging him about the animations. It became clear that Harry was struggling with them and wasn't finished so we told him to get started with the Art Bible. At least from this point onward he started communicating with the team again. I appreciated the work Harry did for the Art Bible, he got it all finished and we were able to hand it in.

This was a crucial time in development for Lab Rat Games. We had really been tested as a team and really pushed to the point where we were at each other's throats. We were over the worst of it now though and things were well on track for the next deadline. I think the team now have a better idea of where they fit into the Lab Rat jigsaw and how important it is that we play to our strengths.