How I Build a Professional Case Study

I’m fairly new to this, and honestly, I’ve never really thought about building a case study before starting this website. It was always something that either A) was sort of thrust upon me, or B) was sort of fluid as I worked on whatever piece I was in the process of making. I Guess in my past projects I’ve figured it out just a step at a time. In the Past Projects area of the site you’ll see (probably obviously) some past projects that I’ve worked on. But what you won’t see is the beginning processes. Most of those projects being related to school, I was given a prompt, like most things that one would work on, but in some instances I’d also be given the tools needed to create said project. But also, enough rope that I could hang myself with it.

Let me explain.

If you were to look at the project entitled Sci-Fi Thingy you would see a piece of concept art (shown right) from Halo 4. This concept art (for an item that changed drastically in-game) was given to the class by a professor who said, “okay, make it a thing.” Paul is really nice like that.

This was to practice a skill that he said would be vital to us when we eventually joined the industry: taking a sketch and creating a fully realized model out of it.

Conversely, one of the other projects given to us was a Storm Trooper helmet (shown below). The precise measurements and shapes (and even a walkthrough) were given to us in the hopes that we could make an exact, realistic replica of the helmet. And I think it’s funny how that can be stifling, yet so much better for the psyche, because you know what it needs to look like, and what little pieces need to go where, and exactly how best to connect it all together.

Now, what does all of this have to do with building a Case Study? That’s a great question, and to be real, I wish you wouldn’t ask me things, because It’s really early in the morning and I’m not big on questions, but here we go. I approach making a case study the same for anything that I’m working on, whether it’s something I’ve been given specs for or just a sketch. I go and find inspiration. I find other things that I want the model to have the feel of, or textures I want it to have. Depending on the project I’ll also watch something that inspires me or that might relate to the project in some way (I’m on a time-traveling kick due to the short film I’m working on for our capstone course, but you can read about that in the other blog.