Introduction
For the first Assignment this year of the Animation Strategies Class, I am in team to create a 3D environment and produce a cinematic short film to demonstrate that environment in a story telling medium. The university wi have a pre-made list of ten locations from which we can choose, however we must have our own spin on it. The whole environment will be created using the computer programs: Maya 3D and Substance Painter, before being assemble and rendered out in Unreal Engine V4. Along with the completed 3D environment and video I am also to write a blog detailing my side of the creation process and finally record my team efforts and interactions into a team assessment document. This assignment was meant to be completed at an earlier date however due to the Universty’s Online Blackboard needing to be taken down for maintenance this tasks is now to be completed by 22nd December 2021.
My team members are Najib Magee, Danielle McBride, Ben McPeak, Michael Thompson and John Redmond.
Link to Assignment detail:
The Theme
Instead of choosing a locations from scratch, the tutors had a pre-selected list of areas for the assignment. This is important to the theme of the project, as ultimately the theme has to fit in with the environment. An example would be a abandoned warehouse which could be well suited for a horror or a mystery theme but not as well suited for a romantic genre. From the list, the team was originally meant to do a project based on a mechanical workshop, but due to confusion within the group meeting and some members having other ideas, the project was to now be based on a blacksmith workshop. The reason both locations were chosen by the team was due to the story telling details we could include i.e: a half prepared motorcycle in the workshop or the ornate weapons created in the blacksmith’s forge.
With the location being decided, the theme was quickly settled on. The theme would be old fantasy as it allows us both creative freedom while enabling the creation of an exciting and dynamic design frame in which we could work. The fact it is based in a blacksmith’s shop means we can create fantasy blades such as the ‘Master Sword’ in ‘The Legend of Zelda’ rather than using simple designed swords. This means the viewer concentrates on the overall design of the item rather than the realistic detail making the object easier to construct. For the same reasons the art style will also be more colourful and exaggerated such as World of Warcraft. We will also be adding Celtic icons and design to the walls and weapons’ to give the forge a bit of personality so it dose not like like any other generic fantasy forge. Plus small marking can go a long way into making a object more pleasing to look at.
The Inspirations
The first two inspirations brought up within the team were the video game franchises of Blizzard’s WarCraft and THQ’s Darksiders. They served as the basis for the style we will build our project on and for good reasons. While they do encapsulate some signs that are more detail that what we need to produce, they are both stylised focusing on how the iconography can immediately identify a person or place but being visually exciting even when see at a basic visual level. In particular the art style used in Darksiders was drawn by comic artist Joe Mardureira who also worked on comics such as The Uncanny X-Men and Deadpool. This helped Darksiders stand out a a product of his work, indicating to prospective purchasers it would be visually exciting to watch or play. As technology advanced much more realistic games could be produced more easily. Joe Marduira was engaged because of his very distinctive art style enabling his work to stand out beside the more realistic alternatives such as Call of Duty.
*These are nowhere near all the minis of warhammer I have but I think this is a reasonable amount to show.
Other elements where:
- Warhammer (coving the systems of Fantasy, 40000 and Age of Sigmar). – Because of the miniatures element of the Warhammer franchise it had some very cool proportionate designs utilizing fantasy elements such as exaggerating clothing of weapons. As I have a vast collection of Warhammer miniatures I could explore their features. If I was stuck on any design I could see the 3D versions of their work for inspiration.
- Ornn from League of Legends – While League of Legends itself has a specific aesthetic choice that also serves as inspiration , we will only focus on one its characters, the champion Ornn. As the character is a blacksmith, he can help us see the style our forge should be going for as it’s his job. He is also a great balance between the fantasy elements (with him being a Ram God, who breath fire) and more real worlds sensibility (he wears a proper apron and a classic hammer design for banging heated steel into shape).
- uses the basic features of his trade such as his apron and blacksmith hammers in his fantasy mode enabling a connection with real life.
- N64/PS1 games like Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Final Fantasy 7 – The N64 inspiration is not necessarily for the overall design but in how to use simple shapes and textures to create objects in 3D.
Setting up the Job Roles
Before we ended pre-production and in moving to production we completed two tasks, i.e: drawing up several elements of concept art and dividing the workload up amongst the team. We split the job roles up based on elements in the scene rather that the use of programs, as it meant that all members could work on the project all of the time. To give an example, I was tasked with making all the weapons and armour, so I would be working on modelling, UVing and texturing them. To do it the other way I would only be carrying out the texturing element, this might mean other team members having a unfairly disproportionate workload in the project. The jobs roles were created on Trello and we will be tracking them on the website as time goes on.
The concept art was created roughly based off our inspiration so the team could have a overall united view of the project overall design and theme.
The References
Darksiders
https://www.creativeuncut.com/art_darksiders-2_a.html
https://www.thegamer.com/darksiders-3-best-armor-sets/
https://darksiders.fandom.com/wiki/Darksiders_II_Armor_Sets
Warcraft Wiki
https://www.wowhead.com/news/handclaws-heritage-armor-fan-concepts-for-every-class-and-race-316112
https://vanilla-wow-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Weapon
Celtic design
dreamstime.com
League of Legends’ Ornn
https://leagueoflegends.fandom.com/wiki/Ornn/Development
N64/PS1 Games
https://zelda.fandom.com/wiki/Link
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediEvil#/media/File:MediEvil_gameplay.jpg