Week 1

In this first week, we were introduced to the Assignment that we will be having for the first part of the semester. For these two tasks I have to firstly create a 3D Environment with a group using Unreal Engine and to create 3 different animations by myself.

Unreal Project

For this task we will have to create a world in a 3D software called Unreal Engine using the prompts give to us by the assignment.

We also had to choose with who I am going to work with for this project. This led to me teaming up with: EJ, Rhys, Harry and Jess for the project. Here is a list of what are the prompts:

1- Haunted Mansion

2- Dungeon

3- Tavern

4- Blacksmith

5- Fairy Realm

6- Sci-Fi City

7- Ancient Temple

8- Museum

9- Garage

10- Observatory

After some thought we decided to work on the Sci-Fi world because we had many ideas and many ways we can approach this project. So, we began getting to work and getting a mood board to get a just for how the world might look. Using google, we search for images related to cyberpunk themes, shows, movies, music videos, or games. Media products like Cyberpunk 2077, Blade Runner, Lil Nas X Panini music video, and Jet Set Radio. Alongside looking at real life reference of cities full of neon lights like Japan and Paris. Here is the mood-board:

Links:

https://www.pcgamer.com/story-comes-first-in-the-making-of-cyberpunk-2077/

https://www.tripadvisor.com/LocationPhotoDirectLink-g186338-d2488841-i295988447-Cyberdog-London_England.html

https://wallpaperaccess.com/akira-city

Bomb Rush Cyberfunk Is A Modern Jet Set Radio

https://progameguides.com/roblox/roblox-leaked-lil-nas-x-event-possibly-coming-soon/

The reason why we chose those images to inspire ourselves with is we wanted a realistic looking city that has the stylish look  of Akira, Jet Set Radio and Cyberpunk 2077 alongside using realistic influences like Japan for its bright neon city and beautiful colours. While also trying to get an idea of the mood of the place alongside the colour schemes of the project.

 

Getting Started:

We firstly set up our discord server for this project. This will act as a way for us to talk and communicate with each other more efficiently as we are also able to share files on that platform and concept art that we have for the objects that will be present in the world that we are creating.

Alongside that, I had the privilege to create a Trello board. This allowed us to list all of the tasks that we need to do and be able to have a visual guide of which needs to be done before completion of this work. Here it is:

https://trello.com/b/Kln7XV28/sci-fi-cyberpunk

Lastly, we decided to see what each person would be in charge of what. In the end we decided to play by our strengths in what we can do and we came up with this list:

As you can see, I am the 2D Artist and Texture worker as I can use 2D drawing applications in a very effective matter.

Now, we began creating small thumbnail art for the backgrounds to get an idea of how it may look. Also I would like to talk about each of the small thumbnail drawing to get an idea of what I was thinking.

• Top left: The first idea was to make a simple design city design alongside a curved tower. This gives me the impression of a lively city due to its crowded buildings. The reason for this is to help with the composition and to make the tower more unique and be able to stand out from the other and to draw the viewer’s eye to it by using the rule of thirds to help achieve that.
• Top right: For the second one, I decided to make the city on a levitating rock to give it the impression that something might have happened for the city to be up there in the sky and to give it this mysterious vibe to it along side making this shot a worm’s view perspective to sell that feeling of something being massive.
• Middle left: On this one, I wanted to make the city look less crowded and more focus on the advertisements and open areas. For this one I used a the Golden Ration as a composition technique to be able to guide the viewer’s eye throughout the city to show a more corporate world.
• Middle right: For this one, I wanted to make it more grounded in real life and limited area by using a point of view perspective to make it feel like a person wondering around the city.
• Bottom Left: This one, I wanted to go all out with the sci fi theme and try to make something interesting and grand by mixing some of the stuff from the top left and the middle left.
• Bottom right: For the last one I wanted a more mysterious theme to the sci fi theme by using a small back alley alongside a one point perspective shot to lead to the shadow figure.

 

After doing them, I wanted to expand on the drawing and try to add colour to it. So, I used the top left one as one as a base to start putting the colour scheme for the backgrounds. For the colours I went with lot of dark, bright purple and blue to give it the distinct cyberpunk feel as a lot of sci fi shows in this genre use bright and contrasting colours and to give it this mysterious vibes to it uses the colour purple and blue.

While it didn’t look bad, I wanted to do another background design using this colour scheme to make sure it works. After the finished drawings, it ened up looking great and getting the feel that I want it to have.

Conclusion

Overall, I liked this week as the group got to plan what each person has to do alongside getting an idea of what are we going to be making. However, I would have loved to experiment with more colours for the backgrounds to truly find a good match for colour. Next time I will be working on some prop design for the city.