Cyberpunk challenge - Diving into The Top 3 Environments

Join us for this very special 3-part article delving into the judges top 3 favourite environments from the Cyberpunk Challenge, hosted by Experience Points and The DiNusty Empire. From breaking down each scene and their inspirations, to working to tight challenge deadlines, there is a wealth of invaluable knowledge to be discovered here. 3 artists, 3 completely different takes on the theme of Cyberpunk.

1st Place - Cheung Yi Kai

Intro

My name is Cheung Yi Kai, you can just call me Jason. I’m from Hong Kong and currently working as a 3D Environment Artist in Ubisoft Düsseldorf, Germany.

My interest started the same way for me as it did for a lot of other game artists. I grew up playing video games and I always wanted to be in the game industry ever since I was a kid. After I graduated from University in Melbourne Australia, I looked for any opportunity to get into the world of game creation. At that time I didn’t know what position would resonate with me, and the first job offer I got back in 2013 was a programming job, so I just took the job and worked as a programmer for 2 years. But after some time I realized I didn’t really enjoy programming and decided to transition to 2D illustration for another 3 years and felt more at home. I then had a role as an art director in a small mobile company for 1 year, and finally I came back to the world of 3D. So it was quite a journey that let me back to the world of 3D. In December of 2018, I quit my job and self learned 3D for around 1 year, buying and joining online courses. Last July, thanks to Clinton, I joined Dekogon as a contract artist and as of this year in May I am now a full time environment artist in Ubisoft Düsseldorf. I’m still a newbie and make a lot of mistakes in my job, there is still so much to improve on and learn, and thank you Experience Points for organising this event and giving me an opportunity to share my work with so many great people.

The Challenge

The challenge gave me a good reason to start working on a new personal 3D environment. The great thing was that I knew there were lots of other amazing artists working on the same topic, same goal and similar time constraints. It made me feel like I am part of a joint mission, just like back in school when we all have to submit our final assignment, which had a bit of pressure but was enjoyable at the same time. This is something I cannot get just working on my own personal projects. This type of challenge really helps motivate me to finish a whole environment from start to finish. But the best part is I also get to engage with other amazing people and get to see their work too!

Constraints & Difficulties When Working On A Challenge

Time constraints are always one of the main challenges. Planning the scope, setting up milestones and making sure my progress is on track is crucial. Especially when you have other work to do on the side. Even when I had planned my scope and everything, it was still easy to go over-time and ruin milestones. When polishing my 3D assets or textures and lighting, it can go on forever. Therefore, learning when to stop polishing assets within the time constraints and focus on the bigger picture is the key challenge, like knowing what is more important to spend the time on and what is not. In my scene, there are a lot of assets I wished to polish but due to time and my speed, I have to painfully stop polishing and move on to the next asset, sometimes even skip some assets. Also, because of the time constraint, once you commit to a design, it will be the final design and there is no extra time to go back and rework.

On the other hand, I guess it can be a good thing too, because a personal project with no deadline can drag on forever, there is no pressure to keep pushing you to work and sometimes a personal project can run on so long that I lose all the motivation to finish it.

Composition

During the Cyberpunk Challenge, I had just started Chris Radsby’s mentorship. He suggested that composition is one of the keys to creating an amazing environment and it would be a great idea to have a clear image of what story I want my scene to tell and that the composition captures that story. He suggested I find not only art references but also composition references from films, photography, painting and games. So I gathered a heap of them and since I used to draw a lot of 2D illustrations, I saw this as a great opportunity to do some quick paint work over the online references I found. Therefore I not only had reference images but also something close to a concept art which helped bring my environment scene to life. Because again, time is crucial and it is important to know what exactly my environment is going to be like. So I spent my first week just thinking about my environment's backstory, found tons of references online and did 6 quick paintovers. In this quick paint over work I needed to know the mood, the color palette, the focal point, lighting and composition. After I finished I asked for some feedback, picked my favourite one and stuck to it.

Colour & Light

The colour and light play a big role in the atmosphere. Without good lighting in the scene, it will always feel lifeless. Peter Tran’s environment is a great example to showcase how much you can change by adjusting the lighting and skybox in the scene. In my scene, first I needed to think about how colour would express the mood in my environment. I wanted it gloomy and toxic, so I picked a toxic green as my main directional light and kept the light intensity low. Secondly, I thought about the focal point. To make them pop out I could pick some complementary colours to go with it, so I picked red but also red can symbolize danger. Then I placed red spot/point lights next to those focal areas, and increased the light intensity in those important areas. Now the scene is telling something and it helps draw the viewer's attention to focal points and becomes easy to read. We don’t want everything to be lit up because it will be too busy to look at and your eyes won’t know where to go. Lastly, I just mixed some yellow lights in just to have more colour variation but I always like to keep the colour palette very limited. Usually I don’t like to put more than 3 colours in. Just keep the lighting very simple and slowly add more to it. Also when creating lighting, also think about the weather. In this scene I wanted the place to feel very toxic and located in uninhabitable conditions, so I increased the fog intensity but also no strong directional sunlight too, because the smog is so strong that it covers up the sky. So again, always think about what you want the place to feel like, and slowly the atmosphere will build a story. In this project I also played around with light animation because light movement can help intensify the atmosphere too, like rhythm in music.

What Are Some Of The Assets That Helped To Create The Atmosphere In The Scene?

I’d say the creepy bear building in the background and rabbit robot are the key assets that helped set up the atmosphere in the scene. I was inspired by Simon Stålenhag’s illustration before the challenge even started. His illustrations are always intriguing and atmospheric. In some of his paintings he likes to put those colorful cartoonish man-made robots and structures to contrast with the dark environment. They felt very unsettling and weirdly atmospheric. Similar inspiration also came from Fallout’s “vault boy”, which is a cheerful cute character to advertise dark and uneasy messages in the game. There is some charm about this odd, spoofy design and they work really well with a dreadful environment. After the challenge, some people mentioned my environment reminds them of Five nights at freddy which is kind of true too! Now I cannot unsee it. But anyway beside those creepy building designs, the overgrowing cables and spikey structures were inspired by Akira and also helped to heighten the strange atmosphere in my scene. I think also the dirty, grungy texture helps to boost the mood in my scene too. I just tried to keep everything in the same theme, so things all look like they belonged to the same universe. All of this can help push the atmosphere further in the scene.

You went for a unique approach to the Cyberpunk scene by choosing an area outside of the city. What inspired this and what pulled you towards doing this?

Around the time of the Cyberpunk challenge, Covid had just hit China. Lots of people from Hong Kong were in a panic and demanded to lockdown all the borders between Hong Kong and China and stop all flights from there. But the government took no strong action at all, plus with all the political problems happening in Hong Kong, I really wanted to take this opportunity to express my anger, fear and thoughts into this project, embedding my ideas into a fictional environment and hopefully spreading some awareness to other countries. But soon after a few weeks I no longer needed to spread any awareness, because the virus spread quickly everywhere around the world and a new law was passed to silence the Hong Kong people. It is a total tragedy to me but of course I will just continue to finish what I started. At that time, I saw some online videos about the quarantine zone in China. It was scary to see the usually packed city streets empty apart from the hospitals full of sick people. They quickly built some temporary campsites outside the city to quarantine sick people. Those sick people are dragged from their home to this campsite and locked there until they are cured. Then I saw another video about the tibetan and Uighur concentration camps in China. Those people are dragged to a campsite too, this time because their mindset is “sick” and need to be sent there to be “cured”. I think these dystopian concepts can be interesting elements in the cyberpunk genre. What if technology had developed to be able to correct people's mindset, the way people think, and force feed the information into their brain. And what if the government owned that technology and the sick people are our children? What will our future be like? I kept this idea in my head and tried to imagine a cyberpunk quarantine zone for these children. First it will be far away from the city, I imagine some child friendly, cartoonish design will be painted on the buildings and robots to mask the real purpose of this place. But at the same time this campsite will need to be built quickly and cheaply, so conditions will be poorly maintained and abandoned construction will be left behind. This will also be a restricted area, so it must be blocked by a fence and gate, also warning signs and messages will be displayed to warn people to stay away. And lastly, surveillance will be installed to make sure everything is under control.

Looking back, what do you wish you took more time on? What could have been improved or changed? Did you feel you spent too much time on anything?

I will love to spend more time on tileable materials and trim, but also plan and set up all my materials way earlier. In this project I created most of my 3d models without any textures first, just the low poly and high poly, then I created materials and textures afterward. Now that I look back, I think it would be way better if I planned and created the tileable and trim texture first. Therefore I can design my model based on the trim I created and will be able to keep the texel density consistent. Also I will break down modular kits into smaller pieces, texture them first then place them everywhere in the scene. In this project, I rushed a bit and started to create most of the 3d models like unique assets. This could have been achieved much faster and in higher quality if I created some nice small modular kit first.

Did seeing other people’s work/progress make you reconsider anything you did or change your thoughts on anything?

It didn’t make me reconsider any design choices, but it did make me doubt myself not working hard enough, or working too slow. I can be quite hard on myself depending how I look at these situations. Usually I will feel down a little bit, blaming myself for my skills not being strong enough at first, then I will get back into my work and push myself to get better. So in the end I benefited because I tried harder and came out of it a better artist. This is not the best mentality to have,and not a healthy one, I’m trying to change it bit by bit. Being hard on yourself is not necessarily a bad thing but I guess the key is not to just feel negative and do nothing to improve it. Also being competitive can be a good thing but you also need to be ok with losing too. Admire other people’s work and let them know what you like about it.

How was working on the challenge in communities like DiNusty and EXP? How was getting feedback from other challengers and the community?

DiNusty and EXP is always a great place for 3D artists to hangout. People are friendly and happy to give feedback. It was great and felt like a great place to push yourself as it helps to make you feel less alone, especially back in the time when I was self learning at home. Also during the challenge I kept seeing other people’s updates and it was really motivating. I can’t thank these two communities enough for staying with me during my tough time going from unemployed to employed.

What would you like to see if there was to be another EXP and DiNusty challenge?

I think this challenge was fantastic already, anything I suggest right now is just nit-picking. I wish there was a way to see all the challenger’s work progress on the same page, from day 1 to the end. So it is easier to find each other's work and harder to miss an update.

What was your favorite part to work on? What was the most difficult part of working on a deadline?

My favourite part is planning and designing the environment, like setting up the composition and underlying story. That is where I have the most excitement and fun. I’d say the difficult part is to push every single asset to the most polished stage. Making assets quickly can be easy, but making it almost perfect takes a lot of time.

How did you manage your time? What were some ways you saved time or worked more efficiently?

Setup milestones and an Asset list. Know what is your focal point as soon as possible, and spend the most time on it because that will be where the audience focuses. Also breakdown your scene into modular pieces and find existing Substance materials on the internet, so you don’t have to start everything from scratch. You can modify it to make it your own and learn from it too. Also Megascans foliage helps save a lot of time! I think using Megascan to save time is totally fine, especially like debris and foliage. Unless you want to be a foliage artist, using megascan asset can be a big time saver. You can tweak the color and meshes to make it more unique to your scene too.

Outro

Again many thanks to Experience points for giving me this opportunity to share my work. I feel so honored to be the winner of the competition. I hope these kinds of challenges will continue to happen and even more artists will participate in it. Thank you for reading this and I hope the readers got something out of it.

2nd Place - Tima Renski

Intro

Hello, my name is Timofey aka Tima, I’m from Russia.

Currently I’m a student in university, studying to be an IT specialist, it’s my last month of studying(at last!). I kind of like all this IT stuff, programming and etc., but about year and a half ago I started deep diving into 3D industry, started seriously studying 3D-modeling tools, tools for texturing and etc. I think that 3D-stuff gives me just perfect tools for my everlasting wish of doing something like fan-works for games, films, books that I really like.

And since then, I decided that all this 3D world gives me more emotions, pleasure and creative juices then IT. I remember my thoughts after a few month of learning bunch of 3D stuff - “yep, this is what I wanna do for a living”.

The Challenge

In my humble opinion art challenges with creative tasks is great way to grow as an artist(and not only as an artist) at some point. Here is my thoughts.

First of all - art challenges gives you some competitive feel, for me personally it means that I will push my current skills to the limit and if it’s not enough - then I need to try to improve all my knowledge.

Second - as a result of first statement - art challenges gives you a better understanding about you weakest or strongest sides. It helps to focus your time on learning something, that will helps you become a better artist much faster.

Third - art challenges make people constantly talking to each other, make them share their feedbacks, thoughts and etc. - all these things make mood of fun and cordial relations. And for me personally, not gonna lie, this art challenge gave me kind of social education. I’ve met so many people and this is also a great part of this event.

Constraints & Difficulties When Working On A Challenge

For me there was a few of them, for example I was really wondering about prioritizing tasks because of deadline. It means that some things I’ve done very fast without any polishing stages and I decided that I can go back and polish these things to the max quality only when I done with main things in the scene.

Also in a start of this challenge I got strong feel that I need to be 100% sure in my final concept-art and blockout because I probably won’t have time to make a big changes later. It was a good experience.

Could you please do a compositional paintover/analysis of your scene and explain to our viewers why it is set up this way?

Sure thing, for example I will try to explain my favorite shot. But first I would like to explain some moments that have been applied to all screenshots.

So, because the whole scene basically about vertical object - hotel “Yukon” - I thought that standard aspect ratio 16:9 not gonna work pretty well. And I take some time to analyse different techniques from filmmaking. One particular film took my attention pretty well - The Lighthouse by Robert Eggers.

The aspect ratio in this film is almost square - 1,19:1. And it’s not a random decision, this aspect ratio helps to make a better focus on vertical objects - the whole film is also about one vertical object, *the lighthouse*. This aspect ratio is also makes scene have claustrophobic feel. In my scene I chose not a square aspect ratio, but close to square - 3:4 because I thought that it will help to focus better on overall building than aspect ratio 1,19:1.

Also I change field of view value to something like 37. It makes perspective a lot more “cinematic” in my opinion and I think it helps to better handling the shots with aspect ratio 3:4.

For this one I combined rule of third and composition technique when the main focal object is placing in 1/3 part of the image and second focal point in other 2/3 part. It works surprisingly well with each other if you ask me, I think it gives even more focus on the “Yukon” sign. You can see exact same technique in The Lighthouse film:

You can see that I used wires, other environment objects and glare as guidelines, it works fine for both focal points. Also such elements as contrast in colours and transition of lighting which also gives a bit more interest in different parts of image.

Colour & Light

Choosing the colour palette for this scene and lighting was a pretty tough process, it’s two things that have to work together very well. Here is my colour palette:

So, the first two colours from the top is for props, next two is for lighting, and last one is for making extreme contrast in some places, for example for sign “Yukon”.

This project is kind of fan art for “Blade Runner” by Ridley Scott and obviously my main refs for colours and lighting was from this film. If look at first scenes of this film you might see main colours:

Yellow and kind of cyan colours, very dark gradient from blue to almost black colour, and all this with bluish tint on top. Pretty grim, right?

I wanted to make same mood. I already knew what colour will have the main building - #807769 - so every other colour should work well with this colour. The main colour for lighting is #cee5f2 because I want to make lighting clearly artificial and cold. And to avoid boring blueish image I added kind of yellow colour to make some contrast in overall lighting. Red colours I used for main focal point, so it’s readable enough and can catch eyes of viewer.

What Are Some Of The Assets That Helped To Create The Atmosphere In The Scene?

I think the main assets that making the mood in this scene is red sign and sidewalk diner. But I really tried to add many details to environment and I think without these details it wouldn’t work that well.

Inspiration From Blade Runner

Well, I’m afraid to disappoint someone, but every scene in Blade Runner inspiring me every time I watch it! Like seriously, I watched this film so many times and it doesn’t want to become boring, haha. The actors, lighting, music - I think almost everything in this film very pleasing to me and I would say the history of making Blade Runner film is also huge inspiration for me.

But also I want to mention the man who have designed majority of thing in Blade Runner - it’s Syd Mead. I am a huge fan of his work and I think if we talking about inspiration - he is definitely inspired me at least for this scene.

Looking back, what do you wish you took more time on? What could have been improved or changed? Did you feel you spent too much time on anything?

I finished this scene about a few days before a deadline. You can constantly change things, testing something, fixing some stuff, but after several days of doing this I decided that I need to stop at this stage and leave it like this. And I think I’m pretty happy with the result!

As I said before, I spent a lot of time planned all things, so I don’t really feel or didn’t feel that I spent too much time on something.

Anyway, one thing I should have spent more time is animation of drone. In some moments the animation looks really ugly haha. And somehow I haven’t saw this earlier!

How was working on the challenge in communities like DiNusty and EXP? How was getting feedback from other challengers and the community?

I have only positive experience of working on the challenge by these communities, I was chatting mainly in EXP discord and I can definitely tell that there was really friendly mood.

People in both communities was so hyped about challenge and it feels really good when community takes a sincere interest in future event.

And as said before - this art challenge made people constantly share their feedbacks, thoughts and etc. - all these things made good mood of challenge. Every time I needed some feedback or just help with something in environment creation process - they are welcome to help. It simply amazing.

What was your favorite part to work on? What was the most difficult part of working on a deadline?

My favorite part was definitely is make a research about composition techniques for vertical shots. I always wanted to dive deeper in composition and color theories and this art challenge pushed me to do this right away, I felt like it’s gonna help me a lot.

Also my favorite part was is lighting the scene, because it’s, to be honest, my first "outdoor city scene" I’ve ever made. Usually I like to make interiors or just a props - this art challenge also pushed me to make something different, made me step out of comfort zone and I really glad for that.

Outro

I really happy to be a one of the winners of this challenge and I want to say big thanks to the DiNusty and EXP communities for that great experience. And of course huge thanks to all people that have participated in this challenge for amazing mood and creative art!

3rd Place - Augustas Krivelis

Intro

I’m a self-taught 3D Artist from Lithuania, currently learning game environment art. My first, brief encounters with 3D were in (back then Google’s) SketchUp when I was about 11, and afterwards in various game engines like UE3 and CryEngine 3. In late highschool I found out about concept art and initially sought out to become an artist in that field since I always loved drawing and enjoyed the process of design. However this idea didn’t go very far. After a while I noticed that more and more concept artists were starting to use 3D software. So I gave it another shot, ended up enjoying it a lot more this time, and decided to switch and learn 3D Art instead. It took me a while to narrow down my focus from the initial broad spectrum of disciplines that the general “3D Art” field includes, because everything seemed worth learning at the time. But I eventually ended up choosing to pursue game environment art, since the idea of building spaces for people to explore and experience seemed to appeal to me the most.

The Challenge

The few times I’ve decided to participate in a challenge, were the times I’ve made the most progress in learning 3D art. So right away, I’d say that this is maybe one of the best ways to learn, especially if you’re going the “self-taught” route.

When doing personal work, I noticed that there’s a tendency to lean towards projects that I know for sure are within my range of capabilities, I assume this is probably similar for other aspiring artists too. Opting for a challenge instead usually gets you a brief that might be a bit out of your comfort zone, but that is where the growth happens. There are many things that you’re immediately forced to learn when you take up a challenge, like proper time-management and effective iteration for example.

Constraints & Difficulties When Working On A Challenge

Well, the deadline… also the fact that there’s no more freedom to change the theme at will and you’ll need to make commitments which can’t be reverted later. Time becomes your biggest obstacle, which is why you’re forced to come up with a plan of clear steps and optimize your workflow accordingly.

However I find these constraints a very helpful aspect of the challenge, otherwise it’s all too easy to end up stagnant with no clear goal in mind and never actually finish the work.

Composition

Composition of the main shot is really simple. Just a focal point placed in the center of the image. Most of that is of course due to the nature of this environment - repeating patterns and a clear and obvious perspective help lead and keep the eye focused on the center. Lights are angled to face inwards from the sides of the image to help with the framing. There’s also that catwalk/bridge which I’ve added farther back for accessibility purposes, but it ended up helping to frame the focal point sort of by accident.

Colour & Light

Due to the somewhat grim nature of the environment, I thought it would make sense for the colder colours to be the dominant ones. Afterwards, picking the warmer orange light for the centerpiece was kind of an obvious choice. Even though initially I wanted the hanging processor unit to look dim and cold, the whole environment would end up feeling way too flat in colour and without any sense of hierarchy, so in the end I opted for the orange light colour. I think it helped to create a clear contrast between the elements in the scene and also added some nice gradient transitions to the lighting.

I also tried to not go overboard with the amount of lights to try and maintain the gloominess in most areas of the level, but at the same time balance that with keeping the lowest light level high enough where details (or at least their silhouettes) could still be seen for the most part even in poorly lit areas.

What Are Some Of The Assets That Helped To Create The Atmosphere In The Scene?

Things like all the cables, various kinds of tech and hardware, crudely stacked cooling cells, portable lamps, mattresses and generic trash, all the boxes that were needed to bring in the materials to set this place up and running. All of this together makes this feel like a crudely built base of operations that’s already been somewhat lived in and has been running for a while. The lighting and color working in combination with all the assets contribute a large part to the atmosphere as well.

You went for a unique approach to the challenge by choosing a Cathedral/Church. What inspired you to choose this setting?

This was a bit stupid when I think about it now. I wanted to stay away from some of the more cliché settings in the Cyberpunk genre. So I was looking for locations that were less commonly seen and thinking about what kinds of stories could potentially unfold there to make those locations worth investigating.

At some point I opened up Google Earth, and my last saved location was somewhere in Rome near one of the basilicas there. Also, prior to the challenge, I’ve been reading a bit about A.I. and still had some related thoughts about it circling around in the back of my mind. So those two things kind of merged on the spot and the idea of placing a make-shift A.I. research camp inside an abandoned cathedral popped up. I ended up doing some general world building soon after to better ground the logic behind most of the choices I made when making the environment, and that became the basis for the scene.

Looking back, what do you wish you took more time on? What could have been improved or changed? Did you feel you spent too much time on anything?

I should’ve spent more time on optimizing the lighting. The scene is lit entirely with dynamic lights and I’m surprised that it still runs at 60fps on my machine, but when you look at the lighting complexity overlay in UE4, things get quite a bit depressing…

Besides the lighting, I should’ve made some more small props because certain areas feel too repetitive or just plain empty. I also feel like the environment feels way too static compared to some of the other entries, so adding some more animated elements to the scene would’ve helped with that.

I also should probably have spent quite a bit more time on the base layout in the blockout stage, because to me the traversable area feels pretty basic and not really that interesting, this likely wasn’t a big issue though, since making this a playable level wasn’t a part of the brief, rather, it’s something that I wanted to add personally.

How were you able to iterate properly and stay in check while working to a deadline?

This is something that I’m still trying to fully break down myself. There was definitely a bit of intuition at play. Looking back at it though, I’d say it was primarily due to the blockout. I tried to establish as many things as I could and set up the story to the point where all that there was left, was the technical work. Afterwards it’s mainly just modelling, texturing and laying out the scene while sticking as close to the blockout as possible and at the same time trying not to mess anything up. Whenever I’d start to veer off course, I could go back to the blockout or the story and get right back on track.

After I noticed that I would probably make it in time for the deadline with roughly a week worth of time left, I took the liberty of slowing down and started to do some lighting iterations and minor layout changes to see whether I could make some improvements.

Did seeing other people’s work/progress make you reconsider anything you did or change your thoughts on anything?

Haha.. It made me realise I had to step up my game. Aside from that I also noticed how much of an impact motion has on the atmosphere, many of the entries featured lots of really dynamic, animated details which contributed greatly to the overall feel of the scenes (Jason Yi Kai’s environment for one). So I tried to incorporate some of that too, even though as I’ve mentioned before, the environment still ended up looking way too static.

How was working on the challenge in communities like DiNusty and EXP? How was getting feedback from other challengers and the community?

Amazing... no other way of putting it. Looking back at this learning path I took, I feel a lot of regret for not joining these communities earlier. It’s incredible what an impact being a part of a community of like-minded individuals has. It’s especially helpful when everyone’s working on something similar, and every single day there’s new content being put out that gets you motivated to keep working on your own piece and vice versa.

When it comes to feedback, there’s definitely no shortage of it in these communities. Everyone is constantly striving to improve and help each other push their quality bar up a notch. So you pretty quickly realise when you’re moving in the right direction or if you’re doing something wrong.

What would you like to see if there was to be another EXP and DiNusty challenge?

Something related to near future space travel and exploration probably. Space has been making a bit of a resurgence as the next frontier lately, so I think jumping ahead and doing some exploration of how things could look in a decade or so would be pretty interesting.

What was your favorite part to work on? What was the most difficult part of working on a deadline?

Couldn’t really pick any specific part which I’d call my favourite, as the whole process was really fun overall. But I’d have to say that working in UE4 and assembling the scene would be pretty high up the list.

Hardest part of working on a deadline was scoping out the project, and planning how long I should work on each of the steps. It's pretty hard to estimate that at the very beginning. But I found that it usually gets a bit easier to gauge your progress with respect to the deadline once you’ve already done a bit of work and start to get a better sense of how long things will take. So having some flexibility in the schedule from the very start is probably not a bad idea.

Outro

This whole challenge was an amazing experience. I really appreciate everyone who contributed to making this happen which gave everyone a chance to test themselves, learn and help each other improve.

I also hope that everyone reading either this, or other finalist’s answers could take away something of value, whether it’s something to help improve their work or their workflow.

Thank you for reading, cheers!