Week 5: Modelling the Main Street

These are some more modelling shots. I have started branching off from the alley onto the main street where the cat will lead onto the courtyard. Here I have had to kind of blend some of my earlier architecture with Sam's more expansive archways and courtyard areas so it flows nicely. Generally I think this is working really well and I will continue to fill the street with more buildings by Monday as this is my production deadline for the modelling part.

Week 5: Adding detail to the alley

This is were I have really started bringing the alley construction together. I have started to add the window and door elements modelled by Jeff and also some lights from Sam. Also I've started to destroy some of the parts I made earlier to add to the destruction and give the impression of areas collapsing.

Week 5: More Modelling

These are some more shots of my modelling. This is a continuation of my work on the overpass in the alley and also a stairwell I have worked on for further down the alley. I have put these in a quick mock up alley which I aim to extend with Jeff once we have started to swap elements such as windows and doors.

Week 4: Environment Design

This is a rough layout of the side on view of the alley which should give me a good idea for scaling and positioning of the features. I will work to this as this seems to fit the narrative and allow for the camera we want to use.

Week 4: Production Schedule

Hey guys, I've updated the production schedule for the week, obviously changed it because Matt has finished his modelling and rigging, Also I think we would like to spend a little longer on modelling considering how good the results are, and we can obviously spend less time on texturing now because we found it will be easier texturing on the large flat planes we have for the sides of the buildings. Anyways heres the plan.

Week 4: Modelling

This is a screenshot of the first piece of modelling I did. I started from this as a central point in my alleyway. I will then start to develop around this. I have also worked on a roof for this overpass area. I'm also working closely with Jeff as he is modelling alot of the smaller features such as windows and doors so we may use these again on different buildings in both our areas.

Week 4: Storyboarding

This week we brought our final storyboards together to see how the narrative would work. We each storyboarded our own designated section and then linked them up and we agreed this was working well. Here are my storyboards I illustrated.

Week 3: Production Schedule

I've whacked up this as a rough production schedule. It might be different to the one we put together as a group but I think we can use this until next week and then re-evaluate it then. Its got a section for each person and its very rough and sketchy at the moment. Also I've noted down the lectures we have on each of the days and a progress tracker for individual tasks on the right hand side. I'll post this on the main blog aswell as my own blog.

Week 3: Finalising Our Narrative

After returning from Barca we decided to finalise our narrative and bring together any new ideas we might have. I drew up a new map sketch that I felt would work well for a 1 minute piece and we also have had some new ideas incorporated into the narrative.

We have basically divided the narrative into 5 sections and by Week 4 everyone will have storyboarded their section and we will re-evaluate our idea, although we think it will fit together nicely as we only need to storyboard 12 seconds each. These are the sections that have been assigned:

Section 1: Matt, Cat walking out of hole in side of house after dragging ball of string down, then exploring street
Section 2: Jeff, Cat exploring down street and examining alley and turning into it
Section 3: Harvey, Cat going through alley taking in narrowness and darkness and then emmerging out the other side
Section 4: Kanika, Cat going down a new wider street going towards an archway which is entrance to a courtyard
Section 5: Sam, Cat going into courtyard with shot widening to show the whole city and all the destruction.

The big change we have also made has been not to having the ground cracking like an earthquake is happening, but have it more like an earthquake has occurred and the cat is investigating it. Also in the final shot the city will pan out to show the city practically ripped away on a kind of cliff edge. This will be better explained in Sam's storyboards later on.

Week 3: More ideas for style and architecture

These were a couple of postacrds I picked up in Barcelona showing off some good back alley areas from the gothic quarter. I really liked the style of this especially with the texturing. I also liked the lighting and the intensity on one of the postacrds and would like some of our own shots to appear like that. Also this will act as extra reference to our own photos we took while in Barcelona.

Week 2: Barcelona Study Trip

In Barcelona we collected alot of photographic visual research, we felt this would be important to work from for building design and texturing later on when we returned home. In my own photography I have tried to work towards getting some images that could potentially be used as flat textures like the ones below:




































We also found some interesting buildings which we think really suit our style we are going for some we maybe be referring to these regularly for inspiration and ideas. Some of the really run down buildings are really what we want to aim for and we might even have to use these for textures if they work well enough.



























Also this was the moment Matt realised he had had too much cheap wine!

Week 2: Re-working the Narrative

After alot of discussion me and Matt decided we should try and re-work the narrative of our animation as we had gone off some of the earlier ideas for the ending. Also we felt it was a little sketchy in the middle. Another point was that we felt it was better to go to Barcelona with a solid idea sorted than worry about trying to bring it together whilst gathering research out there. We put together some new ideas here about having the ground cracking and breaking up like a kind of earthquake. We felt this was better than using the darkness as we would have to make too many changes to the lighting and it was alot to accomplish in 60 seconds. I also did some rough sketches and thumbnails for the end shots about how the cat might go into a courtyard that would cave in.

We went with this idea to the other group members and pitched it to them the following day and they agreed with it being more successful and we spent a session re-working this and developing it further.

I also began to develop small sketches for a birdseye layout again to support the narrative we had developed. This would then give us some rough thoughts to consider while in Barcelona.

Week 2: Continuing Environment Research

This is more research into environments. Whilst trying to develop the narrative I liked the idea of having some eerie and seedy back alleys in there for the cat to climb through. Also they could be quite dark and contrast with the brightness of the bigger wider streets and courtyards.

I also looked into really rundown village areas with quite high buildings. The image in the top left of the picture above I felt was the best example of how the environment should be structured and textured. Me and Jeff both felt this would be a good point to progress from with our design ideas and it would be nice to have this kind of style and colour palette once we came to exploring textures in the later development after we had done our main research on the Barcelona trip.

Week 1: Early Thoughts About Barcelona

With the trip to Barca approaching fast I decided to look at areas of Barcelona architecture in advance to get some more solid ideas about the designs of the buildings we might be working with. I have considered some things in general about the environment to do with temperature, colours, types of materials and textures. I have also started to think about the type of terrain we might like our environment on.



Here I started to think about how areas might look normally in Barcelona and started to get together imagery of current ruined areas in Barca and other European cities. Also I mentioned I liked the idea of using a courtyard in the narrative as a key point of interest so I looked at collaborating so of the features of this type of area. Again above are some of my rough notes. I particularly like the way we can have a lot of sandstone buildings which are wearing away and crumbling slightly. I think this will work well especially if we plan on having our environment really hot.

Week 1: Apocalypse Research

After deciding to go for the apocalyptic theme I had a look at finding some imagery to inspire us a little more and think about ways of destroying the environment. Above are some images I collated for the net. These were of a big inner city and we are obviously going for something with more character like Barcelona. We also felt these kinds of images were a little too destructive and maybe too intense where as we wanted a more natural feel as opposed to a nuclear disaster zone!



I also looked at a game called Resistance: Fall of Man which is on PS3. I felt the environments in this worked quite nicely as basically it has taken London and ruined it. This is kind of the effect we want with Barcelona in the fact we want to destroy it a little and rough it up. Jeff also looked at Gears Of War on XBOX 360 which is a good source of inspiration and we all agreed we liked this look and style as we are big fans of the game, however we also liked the new look for the game Resident Evil 5 as this is set in Africa with a real sun scorched look with intense heat.

Sam and Jeff are also looking into other environments they like the look of for further inspiration both from films and games.

Week 1: Developing the Narrative

Here I started thinking about some new ideas for the narrative. We discussed our beginning and was happy to use a cat in the environment and possibly an old lady (dead or alive) at the start but I wanted to start thinking about what was going on in the environment.

We had ideas about having our world plunge from bright sunshine into total darkness. This worked quite well and we were thinking about something sinister evolving and there being lots of tremors and shakes and rumbles from underground. I quite liked the idea of the buildings falling apart as we progressed through the streets etc. maybe putting the cat in danger somewhat.

Also me and Matt discussed using 1st person perspectives from the cats point of view. I think that this may have overcomplicated the scene because we only had a minute to play with and it may give more of a game type look, the whole group generally wanted a filmic look.

Week 1: Initial Ideas

Straight away we were all kind of set on a Post-Apocalyptic theme. (This formed our group name.) And obviously going to Barcelona presented us with the idea of using a hot, Mediterranean style location. We started thinking about how to incorporate characters into our environment. We had the idea of an old lady left abandoned in our world aand possibly a cat. I also started to think about layout of the environment and seeing how much of a distance we could cover within our 60 second animation. Above you can see a quick rough layout I did of a birdseye view. I quite liked the idea of the environment opening out and getting more expansive...maybe having a courtyard at the end where its really bright.

We also liked the idea of our environment being deserted, sunscorched and generally run down. The idea of it having been destroyed through war or nature causes seemed appealing to us. This was a good strating point but we knew we had to continue to develop this narrative to get something more solid!

Week 1: Initial Ideas and Planning

Hey guys,

Basically I am going to back date some of the first few weeks of work first. This will include all my initial ideas I had jotted down in sketchpads etc. Also I've got my initial research to go through and some inspirations I have looked at.



This was our first bit of planning from the lecture at the start of term. I've just noted this here for 2 reasons. Firstly it shows the individual production areas we will need to cover. Also these will have to be included in our production schedule. Also at the bottom you can see the tasks we assigned for Week One individually to get the ball rolling.....

The Beginning

Okay this is where I will be posting my blogs from now on for the environment design project. I will post up my notes so far of how far we have got with the narrative. Also I hope to have a rough storyboarded ending and thumbnailed out my own version which I will present next week. I reckon its best that we all have our own way of telling the idea and then collaborate the best bits etc.

Anyways.....to the weekend

Harvey

5 days and counting til Barca!