Post Holiday Panic

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.

The Steep Incline Up The Honours Mountain

After some thought on the matter, I have decided the sci-fi idea is the one to go for. It provides me a lot of creative freedom, both artistically and for the research question - I believe I can make it fit whichever path my research goes down, whereas the other ideas I had seemed to always be putting limitations in front of me (at least in my eyes). It's also a chance for me to expand my breadth of artistic styles, as I've never really gone down the futuristic route, and would really like to try it out. That is possibly a risky approach to take for my final year, but I seem to like my risky projects.

I had wanted to use this weekend to come up with a few concepts for the sci-fi idea, but almost immediately I stepped right into some artist's block, and my mind was drawing a blank on anything I tried. So instead it became a search for inspiration. After reading through some of my friends blogs it seems a good number of them are in a similar situation as myself, which is kind of reassuring.

I began a list of all the sci-fi work I love and that inspires me, which should be useful for the literature review I will need to undertake. But in the short term I hope re-visiting some of these will give me inspiration for concepts.

I began by watching the series of Firefly and its follow up film, Serenity, which has an interesting mix of a futuristic style with old western and Asian influences. In Serenity I made an interesting observation about the use of back-lighting, and how it can cause entirely different effects based on certain variables. In a previous project of mine, within the horror genre, I read into the use of back-lighting to create an unsettling mood, however in serenity, the same technique is used to provide an almost angelic aura around one character in a particular scene. I think some of the aspects which would alter this effect are the intensity of the light (affecting the general lighting in the rest of the scene), and the subject matter being silhouetted. For example, a flock of sheep back lit by the sun would be far less intimidating than a graveyard back-lit by moonlight. I plan to research further into back-lighting and silhouettes.

Lighting definitely seems to be of great interest to me, however I feel like I could incorporate the environmental storytelling idea into it somehow(The different styles idea, not so much). Still finding it difficult to put these ideas into suitable question form...

How can light be used in a 3D game environment to influence the players actions?

How does lighting affect the mood of a 3D game environment, and how can this impact on the story of the surroundings?

Let The Honours.... BEGIN!

Well this is it, I'm onto the final year of my university course - Honours Year!

 So, for those who don't know, 3D environments is what I aspire to do for a living, it's my bread and butter, so it comes as no surprise that I would choose to do this for my Honours Project. However it's a very broad subject area, and narrowing down what I want to do is the first of many problems I must surpass in the coming year.

I've had a few weeks to think about this since my first meeting with Lynn to discuss honours, and in that time I've managed to identify a number of areas that interest me (and thought of projects to suit the research). So here are my current ideas of what to focus my research on:

Environmental Lighting
-Currently my main idea as it's the one I have had longest. It is something I have identified as one of my weaknesses when it comes to environment creation, purely for the reason I've rarely put enough time and effort into this part. But at the same time it is one of my favourite aspects in my 2D work and the work of others.
I have had 3 ideas for this so far:

1. A re-visiting of an old concept of mine, with a temple situated in some mountains, in the center of which is a garden illuminated by the sky outside.

This particular aspect I didn't get a chance to model, as I had nowhere close to the skill needed at the time, which is why i would like to re-visit it. Organic modelling is crucial to the concept, another facet of environments I have yet to delve into, which i would like to explore as part of this year. With the light interacting with the plants i feel there is more than sufficient technical challenge as well as a lot to explore and talk about in terms of lighting, such as sub-surface scattering, and animated shadows

2. A house in the south of France, specifically the house built by my grandfather which unfortunately no longer exists.

I am very keen on this idea, as it holds a place close to my heart, which I feel is something i can use to ensure that I put maximum effort into my project. It was a beautiful house, with much of my grandfathers ceramic artwork incorporated into the design. The drawback to this idea is that I'm not sure it would provide enough for aspects of the coursework such as concept development. Would painting various angles of the house from photographs count as development?

3. A sci-fi landscape. This is a genre I love, yet have never really explored. The idea came to mind when I was told to look toward the artists that inspire me for ideas. Coming at the very front of the list is Sparth (Nicolas Bouvier), a concept artist who does (among other things) stunning sci-fi paintings. All of which I find have amazing lighting.

I would love to create something along these lines but in 3D, and I feel this idea has the most potential for lighting and overall creative freedom.

Photo-Realism Vs Stylisation
This is my most recent idea, suggested by Brian after I told him I was torn between which to choose for my project. My thoughts are that perhaps I could create a group of similar environments, each with varying degrees of stylisation, going from photo-realistic, to something like toon-shaded (definitely not set in stone that part). I think a minimum of 3 styles would be nice, and I could talk about the merits of each, and the history behind the evolution of artistic styles.
This would probably be a great project for my showreel, as it shows a breadth of artistic styles, and if I can get the photo-realism good, that is apparently looked on extremely favourably by employers.

Environmental Storytelling (for games)
This is something I have always been interested in, and try to incorporate to some extent into all my models. I love to think about the stories behind environments, and specifically how they guide the player through the world you've created. This is probably my most interactive idea, as I would want to actually have a player navigating my environment. Doing what, or discovering what, is where my mind has so far drawn a blank, but perhaps some of the ideas above would be perfect for it

Of course most of these ideas could be altered to fit into whichever area I decide to focus on, which is great, and quite possibly could be called for.

So that's it for the introduction to my honours ideas, my next task is to do some concepts for these ideas, and try to find more potential areas of interest.