Well I had an amazing holiday, unfortunately i'm now regretting at least a portion of that fun because just as I feared I got very little work done in the last few weeks. I did however think of two more rooms to possibly add to the project artefact - A study and a bedroom - as well as how I can potentially use the colour and lighting of these rooms to expand upon the narrative of the environment. The "story" I described before was quite vague, just about the symbolism of a journey through life, from birth to death. Keeping that original thread going, I thought a good way to evoke emotion would be to add these two rooms, and make them representative of key events in the player characters life.
In all honesty the mise-en-scene will probably play a large part in conveying this particular bit of story, but I am still confident that the proper use of light and colour in these two rooms will be crucial to both drawing the players attention to the key elements of the scene, and achieving the correct mood in the rooms in order to attempt to give the rooms content the right emotional association.
This is a quick representation of the bedroom concept, very roughly modelled in Maya and painted over in photoshop.
I wanted the mood in this room to be quite sad, to represent the player characters loss of his wife. I've tried to use dull, muted blue-grays on the walls to suggest this sadness, I chose pink for the bed-sheets as pink is often associated with love. I used a thin sliver of light from the window to bring the colour to attention, as a way of showing the room was not always so sad.
The lack of light in the room is intended to emphasize the sadness, by dulling the colours, and what little light there is will be to focus attention to the bed and picture. Overall I want it to be a lot darker I think, as the room is meant to be representative of a dark memory
For the study room, I found the colour choices a bit more difficult, I wanted to create a sense of loneliness and depression, requiring lots of grays, but also dark green to symbolise wealth, hinting at the function of the room. The Pink bed sheets on the sofa are a call back to the bedroom, to try and indicate that the player character sleeps here now, and in his grief has immersed himself in work. The light in the room will come mainly from the window which will be close-curtained in gray opaque fabric. I'm toying with the idea of having another light source next to the sofa, bringing the pink to a more saturated colour, for a similar effect as the bedroom.
Originally I had planned the new room order as Garden > Entrance > Study > Bedroom > Bell - Tower, but upon reviewing the flow of the emotional atmospheres evoked, It seemed odd to have the study before the bedroom, as the loss of the characters wife is the reason for him moving into the study and immersing in work. However reversing the two rooms creates quite a dramatic contrast between the entrance and the bedroom, so I have begun thinking another room could be neccessary as an intermediary, possibly a living room with a more neutral quality to it.
While I feel these additions to the project are certainly worthwhile in terms of improving it, there is a part of me that worries the project is getting bigger than originally intended, and I do not want to sacrifice quality for quantity. However I feel I am up for the challenge, the proper modelling of the environment is the part I have been anticipating with excitement, and my best work seems to come out of setting myself big, challenging projects I really want to do.
It never hurts to have a back-up plan however, so I've been thinking that should this prove too much, I could cut some by changing the concept from symbolic of a journey through life, to just being the end of the characters life. Doing so I could keep the bell-tower, bedroom, and study as they are, remove the extra room (possibly living room) and the garden, and changing the lighting in the entrance to be more gloomy. But that is a change I hope I dont need to make, as I feel the current idea is much stronger, and as i said I still havent had a chance to catch up with Fraser since the holidays, so these ideas will be under discussion and could very well change.
But my first worry is to find the motivation to work again after such a long period of relaxation. With the deadline about a week and a half away, I'm quietly confident I will get a decent amount done, but most likely not as much as i had hoped when I thought I had a whole month to concept.
