WEEK ONE: ANIMATION STRATEGIES
In Animation Strategies this week we were on campus for the first time in a year and a half, so it was actually my first day on campus since starting animation at Ulster. It was very strange having class in person for once.
We were introduced to our first semester project, it’s a group project to create a 3D environment.
I teamed up in a group with Benny, Joseph, Fionnuala and Jakey and we decided to model an observatory!
We talked in class and explored a bunch of different ideas and gave all our different ideas. We had a range of different ideas so we all decided to scribble them down on the board quickly to try and convey what we were visualising.
We also talked about inspirations we had that we’d like to incorporate into our conceptualisations! Such as:
- The Adventure Zone
- Treasure Planet
- Breath of the Wild
- Genshin Impact
- Dragon Age
- Animal Crossing
- Skyrim
- The Witcher
- Avatar: The Last Airbender
- Critical Roll
At the end of the day we all decided to make our own concepts and create some sketches to show each other, so we could compile them all at some point in the near future and pick and choose different aspects of all of ours to combine into our final concept.
We decided to make a discord server with all of us in it to keep in contact with each other, and created a miro board to compile references and inspirations for us all to see and take into account.
We also worked out loose roles we could take on, asking who wanted to do what or had more of a proficiency in one area than another, luckily, we’re all pretty even across all boards.
We’re going to be showcasing these environments in unreal engine so we had some pre-recorded lecture content to watch on unreal before the 2nd week – just a basic overlook at the program and interface, and how materials work in it
Over the week I worked on some basic concepts on the observatory, these are very liable to change. I thought it would be very cool to somewhere place a tree as one of the focal points of the room, or at least place it somewhere to add a sense of nature and fantasy. I also want there to be glowing small – possibly holographic? Planets and stars floating around the room, as well as small orbs which could also be magic or fireflies. I’m thinking of incorporating the tree through the telescope in some way, but still want the observatory to be usable. So perhaps the tree could be segmented in half, but still alive. I’m fighting with the concepts though, since there’s multiple different inspirations across genres I want to implement and they might not go together.
In a further early concept – I tried to add a little more interest by adding a small tower with a balcony, but I might actually make it bigger and add some sort of entryway as well, as it still seems too simple and spherical to me. Some of the group members also weren’t too sure about the tree coming through the middle of the observatory, as it might take up a little too much interest or make the building seem more cramped than it actually is. So I decided to mess with the idea of moving it to the side of the room – balancing the building by making the telescope very large and opposite side of it. I also deviated from the idea of a traditional telescope shape, and wanted to make it more magical/mysterious by adding different twists and turns.
There’s a lot more different things I’d like to mess with in terms of assets that are going to go into the room, colour schemes, props, and additions to the building. So I’m getting lots of help from references and inspiration so I can start to build an idea from the ground up. Seeing my teammates early concepts as well is helping me narrow down what aspects of mine I want to keep and which of their I like and want to incorporate possibly into our final collective design.