The project was a massive rollercoaster ride of emotions; the idea and preparations were great and you just can't wait to get going, then you encounter problems which make you worry and want to start over, you overcome them and make a great 3D model, rendering problems start which starts the tedious process of lowering the quality of your work, but at the end when all of the practical work has finished you feel relieved and great from finishing your first major project.
Starting off I had such high aspirations on the project, which didn't make it to the final version such as characters and bullet time. Characters and bullet time was not made as I simply ran out of time from fixing render issues and other problems. Other students were making one character as their whole final major project so I thought that there's no way I can make a couple and pose them in my scene. If I was to rush the characters, yes the scene will make more sense, but it will also lower the quality of the whole project, as the low detail models will bottleneck the higher detail models. All in all I prioritized quality over quantity, which is the main purpose of the project.

As stated in my statement of intent I aimed to create an extremely realistic industrial train, which will be modified, in a mad max style. In my opinion I’ve failed in recreating a madmax environment, but I still think that my project is a success as it still follows the story; the bandits are attacking/raiding the law enforcement.
My project changed in unexpected ways, I thought that at start I will have very little trouble in making futuristic trains which turned out to be the opposite: the bandit train was a lot easier to make. I even had to change the police train into a military so that it fits the scene, This is because I never had a specific design in mind, which shows that if you have something concrete that you want to follow you will have a much easier time rather than inventing something new.

I’ve researched a large variety of trains, their style, and what emotion might they symbolize. I’ve looked at the Advent train from "XCOM 2" (2016) by Firaxis games, which has a very menacing and a repelling look. They achieved that through not only by their use of colours but the mysterious futuristic design. Its incredibly small window at front makes the train look like a moving fortress. The "Madmax" style (2015) by George Miller achieves the same feel but in a completely different style, the madmax style is regular objects combined with lots of different scrap to achieve a specialization other than just driving. I was going to combine these two styles together to make the scene feel menacing, but because of design difficulties I couldn't have achieved that. Even though I've failed in the style I wanted my work in I'm still proud and happy of it as prioritizing detail is more important than style in this project. This project is meant to show off my modelling skills rather than my ideas. I managed to successfully follow the timeframes that I set out for the project with a consistent level of detail throughout.
I also looked into camera movement, specifically how the frozen heist presents itself. The camera consistently flies extremely close or even through objects, which creates a sense of chaos, disorder and unrest, this is because there is usually a clear path for the camera but if there are things obstructing the way then there must be something wrong. I managed to achieve that in my project how the camera slows down and moves across the different pieces of destruction. The slow motion movement when the camera moves next to the bullet shows off the chaos in the scene, later you can see what sort of damage these bullets caused.

If I had more time with the project I would've tried to model and pose the characters to flesh out the scene, then model low detail objects in the background such as cacti, rocks and some grass sprouts. Up to now my train has only the front cabin when I hoped to add carriages which symbolize what this train is supposed to do i.e. a battle carriage made for combat and lots of other carriages from different trains to suit the bandit's needs. The police train would've had battle, prison and sleeping quarters. In post-processing I would've research cinematic techniques and add them to my work, these include depth of field, volumetric transitions and some special effects (sparks and smoke). My sound is also very flat, the first few seconds set a high expectation for the sound, but as you go on you get a constant loop of a deep bass rumble. I would've heavily improved on sound as it adds so much more atmosphere to the project. I hope to make the sound like in the "frozen heist" or like the "Cyberpunk 2077"(2013) trailer by CD Project Red, where the sound is slowed down and only plays when the camera is right next to the object. You can also hear voices/screams of people in the scene. I didn't manage to do this because not only did I run out of time but I also didn't have the software necessary and sound files are hard to come by so I would've had to make the sounds myself and with no experience in music/sound software I doubt it'd turn out well.