Concept drawings for models

These are the finished and polished drawings i done for each of the objects i am modelling within the project. Depa wanted us all to produce orthographic, front/side and top view drawings of each of the things we were modelling before going on to model them, just to show her before hand to keep continuity throughout the design ideas and theme of the piece. This was a very good idea and this is where the group blog come in to play, we could easily show the director our ideas and get the green light to make them within a few hours of posting them up on the group blog, or even a simple text message telling one of my group members to check the group blog did the job fairly quickly, which all heleped with speeding the production up. Rather than producing hand drawn images like before hand of initial ideas, i felt it was important to produce black and white drawings of the objects so that i could use them for modelling in maya, but also to clearly show the shape and size of them. Although simplistic drawings, i think producing these was very important within nthe group to let eachother know what was going on at all times, and how our design ideas were coming along.

Modelling

This section of the blog is about the modelling of the props and other things within the church that i have been asigned to. Before this project, i felt very uncomfortable with modelling within maya, this is one of the reasons i wanted to test myself further in the area, i felt that i would grasp this terms projects as a way to develop and expand on those areas of our course that i was very weak in, and that i had no previous experience in. I started off looking at basic modelling tutorials, and found myself quite quickly getting to grasps with the porocess of mdoelling shapes as i wanted them. The first thing i modelled in this project was the Altar. I was fairly pleased with the way it turned out, especially after worrying myself for so long about how well i would do in the modelling stage. I was also fairly pleased with the way the Lecturn and the Church Door turned out in comparison to the final designs i produced for them. I enjoyed modelling more than i thought i would. Normally i would just associate trying something new as frustrating and pointless, however within this project i found myself wanting to learn more, and trying to develop my own skills, which i actually found quite enjoyable and in a weird way theraputic. I know that not all of my modells were up to a high standard, this is probably due to the lack of time we actually had to learn, and produce the modells, but over all i was fairly pleased with the outcome of most of the props/windows/doors/graves i made, however complex or simplistic they were, i think they did the job we were looking for.



Modelling in progress.

Colour

I started looking at colour, and experimenting with dark tones to get the desired outcomes i was looking for in a visual concept. Conceptual work is not my strong point, so i have decided to rely heavily on source imagery for colour work, and to produce orthographic drawings of each of my final visual ideas, and use textures to show colour studies

Here is a quick painting i did on photoshop to try to show the desired colours ill be looking for in a window. The lower is just a general colour mood i got from a church graveyard, just all visual ideas in a very early development stage which i will look back on and develop when finding my textures.

I also produced a series of short animatic block outs to show what otherwise could be shown in a storyboard, i felt this was a more visual way to describe what i wanted to the group rather than in a storyboard.

My duties within the group and group update

After talking through all the duties needed to be completed in order to get the project finished, we discussed what our individual duties would be. We decided on taking on the task of doing small aspects of one job, and larger aspects and sections of other jobs.
My duties are as follows.

MODELLING
- Stained glass windows and window above front door
- Door
- Altar
- Lecturn
- Graves

For each of these i recognise i will need to first do research, and from there develop concept drawings and TOP/SIDE/FRONT drawings for each. After doing this i will need to consult with our director, Depa, to ensure continuity and get the go-ahead for modelling.

TEXTURING AND UV MAPPING
I have taken responsibility alongside Guy to texture and UVmap the finished model. Guy will do the inside of the church and i will do the outside.

COMPOSITING
Me and guy will be putting everyones models together within our own respective scenes and then passing them on to be lit, animated and rendered.
Me and Steve will then be taking on the task of compositing after we have rendered our piece, we will use after effects to adjust levels within the layers, to get the perfect finished look.

RENDERING
We will work as a group, between the four of us to ensure we are rendering correctly and to a finished level. This is a joint duty.

SET UP GROUP BLOG



I am fairly certain we have split group responsibilitys fairly. We as a group had a discussion and meeting about the importance of sharing responsibility, and we all agreed that if we were to come across any problems we definitly shouldnt be scared to ask for help from other members of our team. If later on in the project we run into any difficulty within our respective areas of duty, we will help eachother out to ensure the project gets finished in time. A group blog will be very important in ensuring the smooth running of our pipeline, so that we can all regularly keep eachother updated with problems/progress. We also all decided that we would speak on MSN if we ran into any problems when not in college, so that we wouldnt have to leave it to a later date to resolve any problems we run into. I personally think we are currently working very well as a group and the group are definitly bonding very effectivly, at this stage after sorting out research and initial deisng concepts/ideas, we all seem to be in sync with eachother and very much so 'singing off the same hymn sheet' in terms of what we want the projects final outcome to look like.

Artist reference- 8 rooms 9 lives

When Jared first told us about the 9 lives, 8 lives exhibition in London, i was instantly interested in it, and went online to see what it was all about. It drew my attention as it sounded like something i would have wanted to go and visit outside of the project, even if we wasnt doing it. I read up on it and saw about how it was about 9 different people who had had remarkable and somewhat outstanding and differnt lives, for exaple one room was dedicated to Francis Galton the man who had researched so deeeply into fingerprint technology, and the room along was dedicated to Alec Jeffery, who 100 years later became the pioneer of DNA profiling. The exhibition was really all about Identity to put it simply. I found it more appropriate to psychology rather than animation with the way the exhibits were seen to be obsessed with physical identity and the way they were viewed by others, and media attention. I felt this exhibition would have been a lot more appropriate if we had a more developed character within our scene, so maybe that is something to think about? I can definitly see how it could be appropriate in development of a character, however, our scene is more geared towards the development of environment which i guess in some way is related, but not as specific as i would have liked. I do feel that our character development is far too basic (spirit) for this exhibition to have had any effect on our character directly.

This does not mean to say this exhibition was very interesting to me, i gained a lot from the experience, and i can definitly seeing this helping me in the future, and as i said i can see how it would be appropriate in development of character to some degree, but it just wasnt for us in terms of this project this time around...Thinking about it, maybe the Barcelona trip would have been more apropriate to our group for research, in terms of architecture and time period, it is a shame none of us went...

Research- Westminster Abbey visit

This visit to westminster abbey gave me a different insight into my research. Where as prevously i have been gearing towards researching the more stylistic side of the design, for exaple looking around graveyards to get a sense of the mood and atmosphere, this visit was purely for the architectural side of my design research. Westminster abbey is in the center of a built up area of london and that is where it differs immensely from the other churches i have visited. This backs on to a busy London road, where as the churches i found in Bexley backed on to rough areas of woodland and parks, allowing for overgrowth and decay to build up within the areas in and surrounding the church. This is a strict contrast to that, in the way it is perfectly maintained, and is more geared towards tourist attraction and is most definitly not neglected. These are some of the reasons i felt it was important to only take away the archietctural side of this research visit. Despite all this, i found some good source material, which i can most definitly benefit from. the shapes of windows and doorways are particularly interesting, although they are maybe a little bit too extravegant and grand for what we are looking to produce, i still feel that they can be used as reference when modelling and designing my own.

Research- Bexley

This is the selection of imagery i took at a local church in Bexley which i refered to in an earlier post. i managed to get a good range of photos here, and it has really helepd me establish the layout of a church firstly, as well as things like colour pallette, which i will be exploring later on with the texturing process and design process. This church is from around the same period as what we are looking to give to our church, so i feel these images can be of good use not only to me, but of to all of the members of my group, in particular Steve who has the responsibilty of modelling the outside of the church. I definitly feel he could take something from these images, and i have told him about them and given him notice that they are on my blog for him to use as reference. At this stage in the research process its really important for us all to come together, even though we are all doing our separate research, we are going to have to all come together at some stage, and by sharing information widely between members i feel we can all benefit. The next stage in my research will be to get some images of Westminster Abbey, as i am going up to London soon and i may as well take advantage of my home city, with all it has to offer as inspiration for this project.