Module Introduction and Initial Ideation
On our first day of second year, we were introduced to Task 1 of ANIMATION STRATEGIES: to create an environment using Unreal Engine 5.
I was able to join forces again with my team from the Year 1 Semester 2 project, which consists of Liam, Kharis, Joe, Josh – as well as Jonathan this year. Immediately, we began brainstorming based on the given themes, and we narrowed it down to three: a fairy home, an ancient temple and a shipwreck.
We agreed to go down the ancient temple route as we found we could incorporate better all our different ideas and thoughts about a Neo-futuristic, mythological and mysterious environment blanketed in old Celtic iconography.
Idea Development
As Week 2 developed, so did our concepts. I referred a lot to various concept art tutorials, as well as lectures on tone and value. As I missed Year 1 Semester 1, it was really important for me to caught up on such things. Below was my attempt at following Jordan Grimmer’s tutorial, which set a profound basis going forward for my concepts in terms of workflow.
After watching this, amongst many other tutorials, I began to discover my own workflow for landscape drawing and what works best for me. I find starting with a rough line sketch is a clear way to fall into a painting, and then further, begin to crosshatch where I see my values falling. Then, using layers and the lasso tool, I build up the values (usually starting from the middle). I have found the simple Round Brush on Photoshop very effective. After this step, I
Presentation/Our Concept
This week (week 3), we presented our final idea to the class, including discussion of our art style which will be inspired by Disney films such as Brave. See presentation here.
Check out the style guide here.
Our ‘armature’/concept is as follows:
An Ancient Temple, hidden away in the Scottish Highlands, was once in active use by a Celts. Within it lies ancient magic, fire, and danger – all in physical formation of a Celtic Triskelion. As searchers arrive at the Temple, we find someone has already – recently – reactivated the obelisk within and begun to unlock the temple’s secrets.
Environment Concepts
Thumbnailing and Ideating
I did this in Week 1, ideating on what the idea of an ‘Ancient Temple’ could be. At this point, we were not settled on a genre, so I was exploring a vast array – from sci-fi, to Western, as well as taking inspiration from Japanese art such as Hokusai in the 7th image.
Jordan Grimmer Tutorial
I followed this tutorial by Jordan Grimmer to better improve my concept design skills. It has given me a newfound confidence going forward. My key takeaways are the importance of depth (darker closer, lighter farther) and the importance of narrative. Grimmer didn’t have a person in his, but I felt like this is what was missing, so I added someone into mine.
www.youtube.com. (n.d.). Landscape Digital Painting Tutorial. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHprIlkY8Q4&t=96s [Accessed 20 Dec. 2022].
The Stonehenge Idea
We are now settling on the idea of using a Stonehenge. I immediately begin to conceptualise how this could play narratively. One idea was a light coming from the middle, as if it was a gateway or portal of some kind.
An alternative option – a light beam from the middle? This may not be within the Celtic temple approach we are going for though. I liked this lookout in the distance that I drew. It could be a good asset in terms of getting a viewpoint from above, which, I am thinking will form a triskele. I was very inspired by the Nature and Architecture book Henry showed us, which details how elaborate forms are present in nature.
Approaching the Temple
I was really happy with these concepts that I did, I felt I achieved a solid narrative and provided a sense of character to the temple itself; an epic, foredooming presence that could be present in the climax of an epic movie.
The problem: this implies an open world.
This simply is not achievable on UE given the time frame and hardware we have combined as a group. So:
Refining -> Storyboard
This was a refinement board I did on Miro. Upon discussion with Henry and the group, we began to change our idea. Instead of doing an outside, open world temple, we are going to do an indoor cave. Big change this late, but it’ll be worth it! Instead of using the Landscape Tool, we are going to model everything with Maya (see Assets post for details).
These are my final three boards for this cave environment, consisting of three distinct elements:
- The Entrance
- The Inside
- From Above (The Triskele)
This is something that’s more independent as we will each be making our own environment videos, but I was able to model around this, which helped massively.
Tests in UE using Quixel
