Mockup/ layout model

This was created using a simple variation of simple shapes in maya as a plan for our environment

Final Personal Concepts

Once our group met up we managed to decide on our final idea being ruins on a small island. Here you can see the concepts I developed once we had our final idea.throughout the concepts you will notice a circular theme appearing this is because we are basing our project around king arthur and so we decided to carry over the knights of the round table theme

Concepts Sketches

Some concept sketches when the idea was still undefined.
These ideas revolved around a market place as it contained aspects of what everyone wanted and also gave me a specification to design to until we had set our final idea which we would be doing the following Monday when the group met up.

Research: Books

While hunting for reference images on the web I decided I'd rather have something in front of me to work from then just a series of pictures on my laptop. so i picked up a book from £8 from Waterstones called Eyewitness: Castles, admittedly its a kids book but rather then just the buildings of that era it has images of tools, cutlery and gates used everyday all things that can make an environment look lived in. it also has images of statues and art from the era perfect for building concepts from.

Research: Other concept art

Being a fan of concept art a have many books for games and films.

Most relevant to this project would be my fable 2 art book

I think one of the things i choose this as one of my images to use in research was because of its use of scratchy lines yet this was one of the finalized concepts for the game, i think it also appealed to me as quite a lot of my concepts have a scratchy look about them. When looked at closely you can also see simplistic the detail is in the image yet is still gives the impression of detail by letting your brain filling the gap.

I also thought the to images at the bottom were relevant as the group wanted to animate the changing of seasons in our final project. i liked the way that you can show changing of season simply by changing the colour palette.

Obviously in my own concepts i wont try and copy the style but these are a few examples of similar concept art

This concept seemed more relevant to our theme as it shows the castle an entire town therefore setting the scene for other concepts to work evolve from.

Past Art

In my free time i have been developing my painting skills and here is one i did before the project was set

Group Blogs

Lydia's Blog

http://lydiafabian-digitalenvironment.blogspot.com/

Hayley's Blog

http://heaenvironment.blogspot.com/

Andi's Blog

http://andibennettde.blogspot.com/

Group Blog

http://tdenvironment.blogspot.com/

initial ideas

As a Group we were initially unable to meet up and discuss ideas due to the heavy snow fall, so through emails we manged to narrow down our ideas and set a 13th century/ medieval theme, from there we managed to narrow one of the environment ideas down to a market square which can contain a variety of ideas and elements making everyone happy but also not being to broad at the same time.

Below you can see a couple of quick sketches before narrowing on the idea of a market square

Here this was a drawing too set a scene give myself a rough location

Here i was just experimenting with a couple of perspectives that could work with a castle environment

Here is a another perspective I found that this one gave a good impression of scale

This is another sketch i did to try and give the concepts a bit more of a setting to work from. i also tried to show some scale with the castle in the background but was unhappy sketch.

This was the last sketch i did before doing research and narrowing down the groups ideas

Introduction and Brief

As before this is my creative which allows me to post my work for current project, although this time I will be working in a Group for which there is another blog http://tdenvironment.blogspot.com/ 

on my personal blog I will be post my individual work and group work as well as the final piece, the personal blog will just give me a chance to review over the work on a individual level.

The project is am working on is to create an interactive environment which allows for dynamic interaction with a character. Although the goal is to create an environment, the project involves the whole process of going from concept too finished product which gives the work a more specific goal then other projects so far. personally I cant wait to start designing.

The brief

Unit Introduction
This unit focuses on the development of students’ skills in environmental computer visualisation. Students begin to exploit the possibilities of animation within an environment to create a virtual setting to support dynamic character interaction.

Working in teams to simulate conventional animation industry workflow, students are introduced to the visualisation and creation of an environment in 3D using modelling, texturing and lighting techniques. They learn how to create and populate this environment with contextually appropriate assets, in a consistently defined and implemented visual aesthetic that is derived from their drawing and research into environments both actual and virtual.

The Unit aims:

To introduce industrial, team based, animation workflows;
To develop personal reflection upon individual contribution to group endeavour;
To develop UV mapping and texturing skills;
To develop the ability to generate considered and analytical visual responses to research.


Project Brief
For this project you will be working in teams of four or five students. You will all be working towards a final collaborative short film but will have the opportunity to fulfil clear and separate roles within the team.

You will be working to create an animated environment.
You will be collaborating not only with the other animators in your team, but also with designers from the environment design course.
Their designs will form the starting point for your work.

This environment will be modelled in 3D, UV mapped, textured and lit based upon the research of materials and environments as initially designed or propsed by IDEAS students. This research will consist of practical site visits (such as the trip to Barcelona and alternative London based venues) and associated drawing and photography, as well as academic research via the web and the LRC.

This environment must demonstrate integral animation, it could be mechanical such as machinery, doors, windows, windmills etc, or it could be more organic, and atmospheric, such as the effects of wind on plants, weather conditions etc. It could be a much more long term animation to show the effect of years passing, rather than minutes. For those of you who feel that you are more character animators than computer visualisers you can focus upon contextualising the designed environment by populating it with characters using that environment, it may be that the environment is being used in an unintended or unexpected way that has evolved through public interaction with the space. (Was the South Bank designed for skateboarding or parkour?).

It may be easier for you to think about defining the way in which you will approach this project by choosing one of the themes listed below.

a) Changes over time (historic).
b) Changes in weather or lighting (climatic).
c) Changes in use of the environment (contextual).

Although you will be working as part of a team towards your final animation, you will also be required to provide evidence of your individual contribution to the project via a blogged design journal where you will document your personal research, experimentation, and acquiring of new skills.