Week 5 - Changes to my Flow chart

Over the week I've been carrying on creating and working on my assets for my scene. As it's the start of week 5 and looking back to my original work flow chart this week would be the last week of working on my assets. At this moment in time I won't be able to achieve that goal. However I have changed the structure of my work flow chart to work like this, see in figure 1.

Figure. 1. Work Flow Chart Updated

I have moved the final week of model creation to week 6 instead of week 5, this is because in week 6 it's a reading week and I'll have more time to get on with my work. I've been getting on with a lot of the assets 

Week 4 - Building the Assets

The day after the presentation last Tuesday I started to begin building the proper assets for my scene. I started with the telephone booth (milk carton), picture frames and I began modelling the Oven building that's centre of my scene. I have been going back to my block out scene and changing round a few buildings like the fast food store. Other adjustments to the block out was the sizing. When importing the whole block out into UDK I noticed the size was a little off with the whole scene. I simply increased the size in UDK and then took note of the size change and copied those figures into the Maya scene. With these adjustments made I'm happy with the scale of the scene and I think it captures that 'worms eye view' feeling like your a rat in this world.

For the Dynamic effects in this scene I've been looking into cloth effects I could use. On a few of the buildings I have covers attached. These could use the cloth effects and adding to the realism and make the scene more interesting.

Video. 1. Unreal Development Kit Cloth Basics Tutorial Part 1

In the video above it gives a tutorial 

Video Reference

Video. 1. raven67854. 2009. Unreal Development Kit Cloth Basics Tutorial Part 1. [Online]. [11th Feb 2014]. Available from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwXsHvlVryE 

Week 3 - Presentation

On the Tuesday of week 3 I presented the concept piece to the class that I wished to create for this module, In the presentation we have to present the research we undertook to build build from our chosen concept piece. A lot of the research images I showed in the presentation, I've already showed in my blog apart the mood board images in figure 1 which contains screen shots from the Studio Ghibli film Arrietty.

Figure. 1. Arrietty Film Screen Shots

Figure. 2. Arrietty Film Screen Shots

For the presentation a workflow had to be made to show a brief plan of how you expect the term to roll out. In the workflow plan I tried to key the select points in the process of the production and planned out how many weeks I would spend on each stage in the production.

Figure. 3. Workflow Chart

In the workflow chart I've tried to pin down all the key stages starting with the concept research back in week 1 and moving through landmark goals like this presentation and next the Alpha deadline in week 7. This is the second draft of my workflow chart and I plan to keep check of this everyday and modify the chart when needed throughout the rest of the module. At the minute I am keeping to my workflow plan with me beginning to start modelling assets for my scene and I also would like to note that in my plan so far I have down that I will start UV Mapping the assets in week 5. What I'm doing at the minute is UV map the assets as I'm making them. So this would need to possibly be adjusted in my workflow plan. 

Picture Reference 

Figure. 1. Arrietty Film Screen Shots http://www.dvdactive.com/reviews/dvd/secret-world-of-arrietty-the.html [Accessed 03.02.2014]

Figure. 2. Arrietty Film Screen Shots http://www.animationmagazine.net/features/arrietty-a-tale-twice-borrowed/ [Accessed 03.02.2014]

Figure. 3. Workflow Chart

Week 3 - Building the Block Out

Nearing the end of last week I began creating a block out of my scene in Maya using the main concept piece and combining other research materials to help expand the scene. At first I found it difficult trying to plan the layout of of the scene. In my research images of the city environment in the film it's big and vast, that was what I wanted to stay away from when blocking out my scene. I wanted my scene to take place in a closed off area. At first when planning I started out with a T junction design and I was trying to compact the scene as much as possible. In the end I closed off the T junction and went with the path going more of a right angle.  

Figure. 1. Block Out Environment Maya 2014

Expanding from from the original concept I've taken elements/segments from my research images I've already collected and new ones I'm finding constantly and trying to bring these into the scene I'm developing. In the scene I've added a fast food store where I'll have the store made from wasted fast food packaging. Recently while researching I came across these images of actual fast food shops. One of the buildings is in LA and the other is in Amsterdam, they are both from the same food chain but their designs are completely different.

Figure. 2. KFC Building LA

Figure. 3. KFC Building Amsterdam

To me there shapes and design resembled of their product packaging from that particular fast food chain, in figure 3 above the store looks like it's made from a chicken bucket. This helped me in developing the fast food building by expanding from that and adding other fast food packaging for example a kids meal box and a fizzy pop cup and straw. Next door to the fast food joint I'll have a posh restaurant. From one of the screen shots I captured from the film I found a building with draws coming from the upper floors. I decided to use the draws as a balcony where the rats can eat and dine from outside in the restaurant. While expanding the scene I'm always thinking about how a rat would live in the world and how they would use every day objects.
The other key landmark in my scene is the cafe which will be located in the centre of the scene. The main body of the cafe is made from a cooker and have the lower level of the building look like a traditional cafe with chairs and tables. The original idea of this building came from one of the research images from the actual film. As you can see in figure 4 behind the close up characters the building made from an oven, In the model I'll stick to a very similar design and look to this reference.

Figure. 4. Flushed Away Movie Still

Image Reference

Figure. 1. Block Out Environment Maya 2014

Figure. 2. KFC Building LA http://www.laweekly.com/publicspectacle/architecture/?topic=2369089&page=2 [Accessed 03.02.14]

Figure. 3. KFC Building Amsterdam http://www.flickr.com/photos/harry_nl/2374266321/ [Accessed 03.02.14]

Figure. 4. Flushed Away [Movie Still] [Accessed 22.01.14]