Thursday 21 October 2010

Hot down, summer in the city...


Quick messy paint here, used advice about more solid brushes, kinda cool. I like the feel of a hot, dry New York city summer...

Tuesday 19 October 2010

Good end to an evening...

Well today's been a bit of a write off since I got my new iphone, but all is not lost.


A quick paintover, sunset palette here, nice colours but probably won't be suitable for an actual level.

Spent about an hour and a half on it.

Monday 18 October 2010

Paint over...


A paintover done for my rooftop. Spent about an hour and a half on it. Not overly pleased :/ will be doing some more over the coming week, hopefully to more sucess...

Thursday 14 October 2010

Hands 'n' Feet...

Here's a few sketches I've done in my spare time (from life).

Bulding my Ideas

Here we go then, my last idea, the modern day construction site. I was going to do the whitehouse roof as my forth, but to be honest I don't think I would have run with that one, and it doesn't give me much room for creativity. So I've decided to do the modern day construction site instead.

This sketch is basically another highrise building only under construction. I've filled out the scene briefly to get a rough idea of things. Scaffolding has a big presence in this scene, I like scaffolding because there is no set shape to it and it can be mess and un-organised, and often is.


One that I havent added here is tarpauline. This would add more walls to the level and make it more confined as you walk around. The animation posibilities of it would really bring the scene to life aswell.


So my sketches are now done and my initial ideas are roughed out to a standard that im pleased with.

Now I've got to choose one...

Wednesday 13 October 2010

The Empire builds back!

Drum roll for idea number 3...

Construction Site
This one really interests me because building sites are always cluttered and look busy, they also have a lot of movement present in them. So my original Idea was to do a modern day construction site, but I came up with a spark this morning and thought I'd combine it with one of my previous ideas.
The Empire State Building. I've always seen pictures and old rough footage of it being made and the perils those construction workers went though on a daily basis, and it facinates me. You see them walking along creaky wooden planks and shimmying along girder, with no reaction to them being hundreds of metres high and one wrong step away from being nothing more than a mess on a New York side walk. When see the pictures there's always so much going on, it didnt have the orderlyness and health and saftey these days.


So I've made a quick mockup of a corner of the Empire State just to get and idea of what I could achieve.

2 down...2 to go



...And a quick, last version of my eco roof. Wanted a better shape for the building.

'H' is for...

Ok, so I've knocked out another rooftop sketch. This one's a big H, as you can probably see. I've made the focal point(s) for this one the wind turbines. I Definitely think my rooftop needs some sort of focal point, something to build around. I think those huge spinning turbines would look great in motion too. The lower level in the middle helps break it up and lessen the repetition.


Ive made the surrounding items (near the base of the wind turbines) slightly different to each others, again to break the repetition. I'm not sure whether this is correct or not, seeing as the are they same mechanisms, so they should use the same surrounding stuff, I'm not really sure. Artistic liscence has to jump in somewhere!


Right I'm going to bed.

Tuesday 12 October 2010

Look Maaa, I'ma saving tha world!

It's time to end my 8 hour modelling sesh with a blog post i think.

Que Idea number 2...

The Eco Rooftop
I guess this ones a fairly obvious choice but i like it, Mostly because of all the green gadgetry that comes with 'saving the environment' (if you want to call it that, I tend to call it 'feeling less guilty').

When Heather mentioned that the people from ninja theory, I think it was, said the environments needed more life, so I think that having moving parts and small animations would really help.


So far I'm only on my first 'sketch', this is partly because I've spent a while modelling a load of rooftopish assets. This first one is quite a simple, and organised rooftop. I did this for a number of reasons. Firstly I had no initial organisation so I wanted to get everything in there to see how it looked, and not to make it too confusing to the eye.


Secondly I like the idea of having the roof sectioned off for different equipment, for that's how this multimillion dollar corp. might have designed it, to be as efficient and organised as possible. Also if it were in a shooting game it would help the player with navigation and orientation, eg. "We've got two tangos by the wind turbines"


Now that I've built the majority of the assets for this rough out, doing the others shouldn't prove too time consuming...

Monday 11 October 2010

Castle to b4...

Ahh so we're fresh into the acedemic year, and the rooftops project has been handed to us.

Looking at the brief I was quite dissapointed, it seemed very concentrated and didnt give enough freedom as I'd have liked. I started by thinking of ideas that were a bit different to what the brief stated. I was a bit worried that they were all going to get shot down and I'd be told to make the 'New york roof top for a third person shooter' to the word. But I was luckily surprised when Heather like my ideas and was keen for me to think about a different theme.

So onto Idea number 1.

The Medieval Castle top
Here I want to create a rooftop from medieval times, especially along the lines of Guard towers and Castle walls. The idea of showing the presence of security without characters is an interesting one for me, Not to mention all of the gritty worn down brick and rock textures that I'd need.

My first Max 'sketch' is a city gate. The structure is basically part of the city walls, with a lookout post and defences. I think the inclusion of different levels of height is vital in creating an interesting level layout. I have roughed in some castle architechture just to get an idea, but it is by no means historically accurate. If I decide to go with this theme I wil of course research the architechture in more depth.


My second sketch is a trio of towers connected by walls, Only one of the smaller towers is embedded Into the larger more dominant tower. I think this has a very different sense of scale to the last one and I placed it ontop of a rocky hill to emphasise this. I also created a quick mockup of a medieval catapult to place ontop of the large tower. I think something like this is a good focal point, and having a large area on the largest tower could allow for some interesting possiblities.
So onto my final sketch, this one is basically an observation post, which I would envision to be place in a very high place looking over massive distances. The structure itself consists of one Main tower and three sub towers, all embedded into the Main tower. The job of this tower would be to guard strategic positions and signal to the main cities/forces of any incoming invasions. Unlike the last two, which would guard cities or important structures, this tower would be stuck out in the middle of no-where and it would be interesting to try and convey this in the sort of equipment and assets that would dress the scene.



So those are my 3 ideas for this theme. If I am to choose this theme I will probably try and evolve these ideas a bit more and get some solid conept work up and running before I even think about modelling it.

Stay tuned for more, this is only the first of four Ideas that I'm going to be sketching out on max in the coming week...

Monday 4 October 2010

Back into it...

Ahh so the beginning of my final year. After a welcomed break I'm about to dive back in, so I thought I'd dig the old MiG out and get it going again. Modelling's nearly done, will probably up the detail on the fuelsalge and canopy and then it's onto the fun process of uv'ing....yay :/