Working patterns - how do you really spend you time?

Many people have different ways of working, but it is not just about how you work it also about how you organise your time. How can a person adjust there working pattern, to get the most out of the time they have to work on something?

Two weeks back I was set a task to help solve these questions, this involved making a note of the time I spent doing things for an entire week. From there I would review this and come up with a better working pattern.

Here is a quick overview of how my time was spent for a week:

15 Hours a Week –Lectures

23 Hours a week – Self Directed Study

39 Hours a week – Playing games

16 Hours a week – Other (e.g. Eating, Reading, Watching TV)

56 Hours a week – Sleeping

19 Hours a week – Unaccounted for

After looking at this I found out that I am actually only doing between 2 and 4 hours of work a day, which came as a bit of a shock because I really felt like I was doing a lot more work. I also I found that the time I spent playing games was as you can see was a little too much, every now and then I would stop working to play a game for half an hour but that never really happened, half an hour turned into an hour and so on an so forth.

I reviewed the time spent and re-planned how I should use it, and this is what I came up with

15 Hours a Week –Lectures

50 Hours a week – Self Directed Study

45 Hours a week – Game play & Other (e.g. Eating, Reading, Watching TV)

40 Hours a week – Sleeping

18 Hours a week – Unaccounted for.

Based on this I am over doubling the amount of time spent doing work, and less time is spent doing less productive things such as playing a whole 39 hours of games.

But here is a question a put to you. No matter how much to plan your time, what do you do when you are just incapable of concentrating on your work? With the reviews coming up shortly, the stress of making sure I have everything ready for it is getting to me. I feel like I have so much that I need to do, and yet I am unable to concentrate on almost anything. I think all I can say at the moment is I am looking forward to the Christmas break, I think I need it

Self Portrait - Captian of the Airhaven defences

More information to be coming soon.

Command Ship - defender of Airhaven

More Information will be coming soon

Airahven - City in the sky

For my first semester I have a three part project, to create an Environment, Vehicle, and Self portrait based on the book Mortal engines. All assets will be staged together to create an aesthetically accomplished piece.

For those of you how don’t know what Airhaven is, let me give you a brief over view. Airhaven is known as the city in the sky, and is a creation of Philip Reaves, author of Mortal Engines. In a world where resources are scarce, and cities move, you have to keep on the move to avoid being “Eaten”. To avoid the chaos of the world, the city of Airhaven decided to take to the sky, using a large number of gas balloons.

A single tier city, that floats above the world seems like an interesting starting point but the descriptions in the book are quite bland, so I don’t have much more to work with, except that it is made from a lightweight alloy metal. Initial thoughts were the street the gasbag and gondola is on. (A pub that plays a part in the story) The Landing Bay. The Dockhands Office (designed to make sure people aren’t going to create sparks or such things.)

Budget
Maximum Tri count – 20,000
Maximum Texture Size – 1024x1024
Total texture Budget – 12Mb

Programs used
3DS Max
Photoshop
Crazy bump

After some initial concepts decided to work on the landing bay. My ideas were for there to be several different docking spaces on the outer ring of the platform, with fuelling pipes. A radio tower and a stall to sell Airship parts, e.g. Engines, tools, etc.

Fuelling Station

Stall, Props and light

Completed Scene (no Textures)

Completed Scene (textured)

Diffuse and Normal Maps With Wireframe

As you can tell this scene isn't finish I need as edit some of the geometry to avoid getting some of the shadows, add the Sky dome Texture, Specular Maps, and get the Lighting to work