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.