Our first assignment in the module ‘Animation strategies‘ is to produce a cinematic Short film using the 3D environment we create, as its storytelling medium. We will work in groups to produce, develop and model key assets to build the chosen theme of environment. During this assignment I will build my skills with Unreal engine to render the environment, coordinate with my team in person and remotely, organise an equal share of projects for each person to work on, and plan, research and help out my classmates.
For week 1, I joined a group of 5 classmates that were interested in creating the Haunted mansion environment. They are Alisa, Caithlin, Matthew, Megan and Jennifer. We started off our brainstorming by discussing in class and using a whiteboard to write our ideas. We wrote down our biggest inspirations, assets we could make, the look of the environment etc. Here are a few images of the brainstorm.
We conceptualised our own ideas of what a Haunted Mansion looks like and what it may contain so we wrote down essential assets such as staircase, clock, paintings, chairs and tables. We also thought about what rooms it would have – kitchen, grand hall, library, dining room. For a while we were stuck between choosing a vibrant cartoon style like Luigi’s Mansion, or a sophisticated, realistic style like victorian houses.
On the weekend we had a group call on discord discussing our initial style and what story we could tell from our environment. We collected many more references that influenced our ideas, we brought in our thumbnails and early concept pieces, and we found a way to describe a style we all like.
We used miro board to bring together all our ideas. We had collected many references from video games, animated films, live action films, local vintage shops, google maps, and cinematography genres.
We were very interested in luigis mansions asset style that create a fun/spooky vibe to a haunted mansion. We were also inspired by the colour palette from the game and took reference from them. More games that inspired us was Little Nightmares, and a student game, Bernadette – they helped us with picturing our visuals and assets. We found clips and screenshots from films such as 101 Dalmatians, The Addams family, The Nightmare before Christmas, Crimson peak, Beetlejuice. We were fond of all their takes on haunted places, their set design, their cinematography, and props they used. Additionally we looked into German expressionism for the set building and camera shots they make to create their eerie, haunted visuals.
I also was recommended to look through a website called on the Square Emporium – a vintage shop with many victorian style furniture and objects that would enhance our asset modelling in the future.
Later on we used these references, and made our own thumbnails and concept work as a group to put on paper, our imagination of how our haunted mansion will look. I had made a thumbnail page and a concept page, using ref from the On the Square Emporium site, and colour palettes from Luigi’s Mansion.
I made thumbnails of some room layouts and assets that could be included in the haunted mansion. I also made concepts of a sofa and desk from the vintage shop, and painted them with the colour palette below that our teammate Jennifer made.
Jennifers Colour palette
With my concepts, and the groups concepts together, we had made a better idea of how our haunted mansion was going to look, and how it will be presented. Next we will be continuing our concepts, organising our workflow, and making our first presentation on the project.