Timetable

Perspective Drawings

This is the front perspective of my module. I wanted the player to enter from the perspective that this picture is drawn from. The buildings are parallel to each other, with the street-lights shown going down the street. The destination is a seedy club, with the black opening being the entrance to the club. Bouncers would be stationed near the entrance if the module was actually put into play.

I did two top down perspective drawings. One was straight on; the other was from the side. This allowed me to gain some understanding on how the module would work as a 3D import.

Game Environment Plan

Experimental Concept Designs / Perspective Designs

Self Evaluation

My environment is a futuristic city that’s inspired by real places like Toronto and Shanghai. These cities have tall skyscrapers and bright lights that give the cities a very sleek, modern feel. I feel like the environment would be suitable for a story related shooter, where the player would enter from the road, and would proceed down the street. The building on the north side of the module would be the objective point for the player, and there would be a lot of shady NPCs hanging around the streets on the way. The idea has changed quite a bit from when I had originally started the project. Originally, the project consisted of a module that was very much based on the height of the buildings in conjunction with the platforms that would connect them, but over time I have made it so that the module is played on the ground, as I feel like it would run smoother as a ground level on a practical level from the perspective of level design. There was plenty of reference material that I could find online because of the type of setting that I had chosen for my environment. Some of the media that I had chosen to use as a reference included Blade Runner, Star Wars & Mass Effect. All of these pieces of media had environments that were very gritty and I felt captured elements of what a futuristic planet could look like. There’s an expansive array of information available for all three of these franchises because of the amount of work that’s been officially released within the universe. It’s very useful, as you can see what goes into established worlds, both in their concept design and the depth of the worlds that are shown. These franchises have planets that are often showing a connection between the environment and the way that people act. As an example of this, Blade Runner’s environment is very dark and gritty, so the characters that are a product of that environment are very shady. In Star Wars, one of the main planets from the film has the higher ups from the Jedi order in a planet that is very sleek, clean and light. The only times during the films that the planet is shown during night time is during scenes that have people who are more shady being incorporated into the scenes. These are usually during bar scenes, showing the nightlife of the world. As opposed to this, Jedi Temple scenes are usually shown during the daytime, where we associate these characters with peace and tranquillity. I think that these details are important, because it’s interesting to see the thought process that went behind the creation of these cities. I feel that seeing the thought process that goes towards creating these worlds affected my design, as it had an effect on how I approached it. The environment has to be practical within its own world; otherwise it will not make sense within context. Syd Mead and Ridley Scott were my main inspirations for this project because of the consistency of the worlds that they were creating. Alien, Tron, Blade Runner and Prometheus had at least one of them behind the scenes helping to shape the world, and it's apparent with their style that they like the contrast between the dark nights and bright cities. I created concepts for this project on paper, trying to create different perspectives of the buildings that I would be re-creating in Maya.

At the start of the project I was leaning towards a concept that was based on a city where the game would be navigated through on the rooftops. As the project progressed, I decided to take the module to the lower level, as I felt like this could help capture the grittier atmosphere that I wanted. When we think of the future, we think of flying cars and skyscrapers. Having it played out on the ground is a nice contrast to this. I feel like I could've done more research on early science fiction and its inception as a genre. That may have helped me put modernised science fiction media into context. Lighting can affect the mood of a piece drastically, and sometimes it can happen in subtle ways. In real life, no one thing is just one colour, with there being a different amount of colours that blend into each other that makes the image that you see. So many variables can go into making a picture what it is. These variables can have an effect on the picture by hiding or distorting part of a picture from the viewer, giving symbolism to a picture through use of shadows and light. With my designs, I wanted there to be a clear distinction between the people who would be living in the world. The lower into the city you get the darker everything is going to get. The top of the city would be very bright, with it also being very open. The lower cities would be very crowded. I guess an equivalent would be the streets being akin to something like the streets of New York, where there’s a lot of people to the point that it’s almost overcrowded. There’s a similar thing going on for the planet Taris from the video game Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. I do feel like I'm not happy with how my final piece turned out. I think the concepts for my work was much more detailed than how it actually came out. I aim to improve in Maya for the next project, because I found it so difficult to recreate the things that I actually had planned in my concepts.

During this project, I had to use a variety of software. As a result of this, I felt that I had a better understanding of where I am at when it comes to my skills with certain software. I think that my Photoshop skills are improving, and I have learnt a variety of ways in how I can create my concept designs with both minimalistic designs and more complicated pieces.  For my Photoshop concept pieces, there were a lot of sleek, slim designs that were created with outlines and solid coloured textures. I used a lot of layering for my piece and created a cartoon styled environment that was based in contrasting images and sharp cuts. In Maya, I feel like I’ve learnt how to create objects that are a bit more complicated within my environment. Before this project, I had a very limited knowledge concerning the use of Maya and how I can create environments, but with this project I was forced to create an environment that would need objects that would actually belong in a street. This consisted of street lamps, a variety of buildings and windows. With my Maya work prior to this project, I could only make really simple shapes, to the point that I felt limited with what I could actually design because I didn’t think that I could replicate the concept design in Maya. I also felt this project was a learning experience when it came to the different array of things that I had to combine to make something as simple as a street. With prior projects, every piece of Maya work was singular objects, so I had to look at my environment from the perspective of somebody playing the game, which made me think about where I wanted to place my objects. A player will often subconsciously know where to go just based on certain factors in a game pointing them into a certain direction, so I tried to have everything funnel to the north side of the model.

Idea Originality

The Originality in My Idea

For my originality in my idea I tried to make a city that is based on futuristic cities. I had taken influences from very modern looking cities such as Tokyo, New York and Toronto to create a sci-fi environment that was actually practical. I didn't want it to be as fantastical in terms of how it would actually play out. I wanted an environment that would be practical from the point of view of a person that was actually living in the world, which is why I took my references from things that are present in real life. For this project, I was influence by a lot of different types of media. Films like Blade Runner and Minority Report had a heavy influence on my environment because I feel that they both show a future that is somewhat realistic. They show environments that are gritty, but also ones that you are able to imagine could actually be a realistic possibility in the future. A video game that greatly influenced me was the Mass Effect series, as they not only have a variety of functioning worlds but the attention to detail that the game provides immerses the player in such a way that it really enhances the overall experience. Each world feels unique, with the different species that are shown in the game actually functioning on the planets as you explore each of the planets. This was helpful to see, because I wanted my environment to be practical as well as looking nice from a visual point of view. The visuals that I imagined for my environment would be tall skyscrapers that had very bright lights on them. This would be in contrast to the dark sky background that would really make the lights stand out.

This is a picture of Toronto at night time. The sleek, tall buildings with the bright lights really give the city a very modern look in my opinion. I would ideally take a small sample of the city and use that as inspiration for my project. One of the things I noted is the variety of buildings that are available in that picture. The CN tower is located at the back but it is both a different colour than everything else in the picture and is also raised much higher than the other buildings. The important thing to note is that none of the buildings in the picture are all the same size, and I think this is important to remember when trying to create a realistic environment.

Textured Asset & UV's

Photoshop Concept Painting

This is my final Photoshop concept design.

I started off by making four silhouette black shapes that I could attach yellow panels onto. Once I did this, I repeated the texture in lines to create the illusion of building windows that went down the sides of the building. I applied these to side of the buildings and stretched them across to fit. I then lowered the opacity to make it look there are shadows that are in-between the buildings.

For the building at the back, I created a black silhouette as the base of the building. I then applied a filter on top of it with a texture to create the effect of a building with small plates on it. I then applied a brown texture underneath this because I wanted to seperate the building from the black buildings that were placed near it.

For the streets, I added a gradient overlay of brown and white, with the white emitting from the building at the back as it gets darker throughout the street. I added a Bevel and Emboss effect to create highlights on raised areas.

Artist Style & Analysis Research

Artist Research

Blade Runner's now iconic look and design was crafted by multiple people, and was influenced by a variety of sources. Director Ridley Scott is now known for helping to create the style of science fiction in mainstream films, with Alien, Blade Runner and Prometheus all being directed by him. Ridley Scott has said in interviews that he was inspired by Heavy Metal comic books at the time. Ridley Scott also noted that directing Blade Runner was perhaps the hardest pressed thing that he's ever done in his career as it was a mammoth task to create a world for a film when there isn't much to borrow from. An early visual reference for Blade Runner was Edward Hopper's hauntingly lonely painting "Nighthawks". In this piece of work, the painting depicts a group of nocturnal urban dwellers frozen in silent meditation under the stark florescent light of a sparsely populated all-night diner. It's apparent that this had an impact on the way that Blade Runner's world was constructed just by seeing the atmosphere that the film was going for.

Artist Syd Mead teamed up with Ridley Scott to help translate these references into the studio, which helped create the unique, urban landscape that is seen in the film itself. Syd Mead has said that he used the model of western cities like New York or Chicago that were laid out after the invention of mass transit and automobiles, with grids and linear transport. He felt like the concept for the city should involve an upper city and a lower city. The street level becomes the basement, and decent people just don't want to go there. In his mind, he felt that all the tall buildings have a sky lobby and nobody goes below the 30th floor, and that's the way life would be organised. 

Another artist I researched into is Mary Blair because I feel that she establishes the tone of the picture in a few different ways. Very vibrant, contrasting colours are used with the colour palette leaning more towards the orange/red side of things, which gives the piece a very warm feel. Unrealistic, cartoony facial features are used in a way which gives the piece a very flat, sharp look. Simple shapes are used in combination with the smaller features as a way to provide the tone of what the artist was going for, as it establishes a lot about these characters without anything being said. You can see that the character’s cheeks are red, while the characters are smiling and looking at the viewer, which implies friendliness.

Blair’s style is reminiscent of a style that is very simple and childlike, but at the same time it’s very inviting and charming, with this style being something that draws the audience in. As an example, in this picture there are buildings in the background, yet they are made standard colours and shapes that you would most likely find very easily. The use of these simple colours and shapes easily fit into Josef Alber’s colour theories, where the thought is that colours affect the perception of space within a picture.

These shapes that are very flat and have a lot of layers to their structure are a product of some very sharp, contrasting colours with some shapes that are constructed in a way that they can create the illusion of a building through the use of multiple shapes stacking onto each other. These are relatively simple shapes, but because of the composition of them, they can be put together to create something that’s very jarring.

Artist Work Analysis

Syd Mead – The lead artist for Blade Runner, his artwork is very much reliant on contrasting colours to help create the sci-fi atmosphere that he aims for. His work primarily is visually futuristic, so a lot of the same techniques are applied across a lot of his work I’ve searched online for reference images that I could find from the artist, and I’ve noticed that all of his work is made to look very clean and sterile, even with a lot of different colours being applied at the same time. The scope of his pictures tries to portray the vast open space of the future, with there being a lot of empty space at the back of his pictures to show this.

Matt Rhodes – This is the lead designer for the Mass Effect games, so I thought it would be appropriate for me to look into his work for research considering how many sci-fi influences the Mass Effect series takes to create the look and feel of the games. I found some references online because the concept designer has his own blog that he posts to, and he shares his influences that have went into the pictures which I found very useful. I feel like some of the blog’s helpfulness stems from the fact that you are able to see the original concepts and the progression that comes with that. In these pictures, you’re able to see the style that is applied to both environments and characters, and it really gives you an idea into the insight of what it takes to create the atmosphere of a world.

Software Analysis

Software Analysis

Maya

I feel that I'm getting slowly better with Maya over time. I came into this project not remembering a lot of things from last year using Maya, so there was a bit of an adjustment period where I had to re-learn parts of it. I feel like for future projects, I’ll be much better with Maya because I have looked up a lot of tutorials and I have went out of my way to learn a lot of the things that I otherwise would not have known. I've also got an understanding of proportion which I didn't understand before, as I had to make multiple buildings which had to be scaled correctly to the street that they were on. 

For this part of the city, I had to create buildings. The extrude tool was used at the top part of the building, and I sculpted the top part outwards. I then made the sides slope down to create the effect of a platform, because I felt that the original piece looked a little flat. 

The street lights were created in 3 pieces, and were then merged together and aligned together on the street. The bottom piece was made in a circular shape, while the middle piece was just a thinner version of an oval shape which was then stretched in width and diameter. I then copied and pasted the middle shape, shortened it, highlighted the faces and curled the top to my desired effect.

Photoshop

My Photoshop concept design for my environment used a lot of simplistic techniques to achieve a cartoon styled effect. A lot of the influences that I looked at included design choices such as sharp, contrasting colours. I feel like in game, the city would look very vibrant while retaining a dark gritty atmosphere due to the contrast between the streets and alleyways  in conjunction with the dark buildings in comparison to the lights that are very prevalent.

Photoshop was also very useful earlier on during the project, because it allowed me to experiment with concept designs when I wasn't quite sure what I actually wanted to make. I used to fill tool to create silhouettes of potential buildings that I wanted to make, which allowed me to quickly make designs digitally without adding detail to them.

Another thing that Photoshop helped with was editing sketches that were hand drawn. Once imported, I could clean up any pictures that I'd drawn, test colour schemes or add them to another piece of work to see how it would fit in to the overall environment.

Planning Workflow

Written Proposal of Idea

I want to do this idea, because I think that futuristic cities are very cool looking due to the amount of ways that you can interpret how the future will be. Some media portray futuristic cities as very clean and sterile, while other pieces of media makes the future out to be a very gritty place. The fact that there can be such different interpretations of the future (A good comparison being the difference between Minority Report and Blade Runners cities) means that I could try to make a level that was both practical in the context of its universe as well as one that looks interesting).
I think my environment will stand out visually because of the flat, slender buildings being a nice contrast to the bright lights that will be used as textures. Technically, I feel like my environment can use a wide array of buildings, because there are a lot of very good examples of interesting looking buildings in popular cities in real life. Cities like Toronto and Shanghai use a wide range of buildings, but they still look very sleek.

The environment is set in the distant future, but it’s still on Earth. My environment is made with the idea being that there were cities. Then the cities got larger and wider. Eventually the cities sprawled so much, they fused into one another, and the surface of the planet became covered by this mega-city. But that still wasn't enough room, so the city grew vertically. As the city grew higher and higher, the lower levels fell into disarray. The end result looks like my environment.

The objective of my game consists of a level to level system, with 3-4 rooms consisting of a level. This would be one of the rooms that would be playable, with the player progressing to the next stage when he reaches the endpoint that each room would have. The connecting buildings would create an environmental challenge, as you’d have to traverse the buildings, while also avoiding falling.

A lot of the visual focus points will come from the lights in the city. The buildings that are closer will often be tall enough to have shadows that will darken the player’s surroundings, whereas the distance will have bright lights that should tell the player where the object is, without actually giving them directions.

The art style of my game would be quite dark, but also cartoony at the same time. I think a good reference for this is the Batman: The Animated Series TV show, where I think they were able to balance the style very well, which allowed them to set a consistent tone for the show throughout its run. The environment is supposed to be a very sleek, dark looking city with a lot of bridges and stairways that keep the city flowing from a gameplay design. The city has a hazardous aspect to the level, because the player will die if he falls from the runways that connect some of the buildings. One of the challenges that the environment would impose on the player would be the inclusion of snipers in the level. With all of the windows and the vertical nature of the map making it harder for the player to reach the objective.  My environment is a futuristic city that’s inspired by places like Toronto and Shanghai, where there are tall skyscrapers and bright lights. I feel like the environment would be suitable for as a shooter where the buildings could possibly be used as vantage points, with there being multiple floors to these buildings.

A big influence on my city is the Blade Runner and the Star Wars universes. I feel like the amount of description that’s been put into these worlds over the years since the original introductions to the universes from their original films is huge, and because of that there are a lot of things that weren’t planned to be part of their universes but are now added. With universes that aren’t as consistent or as believable within their own boundary, it would be almost impossible to take the story to new parts of that universe, which is why it’s so important to keep a set of rules. A universe can be unrealistic, but it still needs to be realistic within its own rules. The reason why my environment is structured in the way that it is regarding where things are placed is for a specific reason. Unlike real life, there needs to be things in games that are more black & white in where the player needs to go, or what the player needs to do. This made me build my environment in a specific way, with me having a start and end point in mind, so that the player knows that they can progress from room to room.

Photoshop will be used to create new ideas, as well as allowing me to clean up any sketches that I've drawn through importing them. I can use Photoshop to create the things that I want to make in Maya to get a better understanding of what I actually want, as I feel like seeing a visual piece of work instead of just a written idea can help spark the imagination as you may find something that you like just by experimenting. Maya and Mudbox will be used to create the final model.

Moodboard of Chosen Theme