Prop - Settee

I haven't had much time for working on this separate assignment. I did some possible designs for a settee in the room. Not sure how far he wants us to take these to finish.

Layout design

Props design from Dan

Props design.

1. Fireplace

2. Mirror

3. Window

Prop design

Week 5 HW and new team project

      Hey,the homework this week is finish both interior and exterior. One more page of the sketches you think is good to be present. We need to print them out on 11*17 paper next week. So 3 pages total. I will also make group name tag for our group. Will upload the title tag design options later.


There is another group project.

       Just copy and past this stuff here. For our discussion from this week. We wanna a victorian interior. Something like Sherlock Holmes. And this room is in a ship. So maybe a small cabin? And for the lighting, we think the ship will sailing through a light house. So the lighting will change through ship moving. We can add more dramatic effect through the lighting. Brain said this project will be done on week 9. He wanna us separate the works like one person doing the prop design, one doing the lighting etc. We can talk this more in next class. For right now we the possible weapon could be the ashtray, the knife/gun hide under the hidden part of a desk. There are still a lot we wanna do with this murder scene. I guess this week we just focus on the finish painting? We will talk about this more next week. 

Welcome to the second half of the term!

The second half of the term is where this class separates itself by providing real world problem solving instead of just making a "pretty picture" which is also useful, but may fall short on critical thinking required by an exceptional concept designer.  You guys want to be exceptional don't you?  :)  

This team assignment will put your skills to the test in concept design as well as problem solving  within a given set of metrics for video games and in some cases set design for a film/animation. However, this exercise is emphasized towards games.  The design rules are universal.  

Please take a look at the instructions. I'm keeping this really open so you guys will have plenty of creative freedom to come up with visual devices to design an environment layout that will guide a viewer to interact in a certain way.   This will be a team effort and everyone on the team will participate in one form or another.  The assignments are designed to be done in two class sessions and also outside of class time. These assignments are designed to be short and should not take too much time outside of class since most of it will be done in class.  

This assignment is flexible and is not meant to be linear.  It just gives enough information for you guys to take it to the next step.  

Case #1:  Bad Mojo

Brief:  Deckard is investigating a murder scene in an apartment.  The victim’s body lies in the middle of the floor. The victim dies of an inflicted wound.  No weapons are found. There are no signs of a struggle and things in the room are left undisturbed.  The only thing that has been left on the floor is his phone and a read out card.  The room can be any type...an office, a bedroom, a lab, etc. 

Set of rules:

1)      Deckard has a scanner on him that can detect materials such as bodily fluids.  Very much like a UV light used in CSI. How do you design an area where the player will use this device?

2)      Deckard (the player) must interact with 3 things (can be devices) in the room to figure out the clue that will help solve the murder.  The interaction of these objects is ordered.   For example:  Deckard has to go to the bed first, then to the desk to use the disk to access video logs, etc.

3)      You can move the furniture around, but you cannot move the windows/ doors.  The room can be entirely an office, a small living room, a bedroom, etc.   You may add another door in addition if it is a closet.

4)      You can change the shape of the room, furniture, etc. but the layout in the middle of the room has to be clear enough for the player to walk through. 

5)      Given the brief, the way you use the information is very open.  The most important part of this exercise is how do you craft a layout design to have the player do what you want?

6)      You must use a combination of layout composition, lighting, camera angles, and player design interactions( this can be a device, a sequence of consequences caused by a device or player action).
7) Not restricted to a time period such a future or style such as sci-fi.  This is a problem solving exercise.  Your team will be presenting your results at end of term. 

Instruction:

Abiding with the set of rules, how can your team construct a story to guide a player or interactive viewer to do certain things in order to solve an objective?   There are no right answers.   This exercise will hopefully teach you how to design a narrative through your layouts and setting up focal areas to manipulate a series of actions and consequences.

Designer Block Mesh- this is a typical 3D block mesh a designer will give to a concept team to work from

Personal Choices

It seem's like we've got a lot to work with here.  To reiterate what Collette said in case we are not clear: each of us will choose a location that interests us and design those on our own.  So 5 total locations for the group, in other words.

Here in the comments of this post, I would like to know what location each of you are planning on doing, and what their amount of fantasy or realism is.  I have a few ideas for locations, but I want my choice to compliment what is being chosen by you all.

I liked the hanging gardens of babylon for a possible final location (heavily fantasy, like Shambala in #2), and I also liked the aztec theme for a more realistic setting.   I also had in mind of doing Atlantis, a city swallowed by the ocean; it wouldn't have to be an actually submerged city, so it gives a lot of options to play with metaphors and stuff. If you guys think this is a good idea, let me know (we can also tie it in with the Bermuda Triangle because, according to Plato, the city of Atlantis was consumed in the atlantic (bet you guys couldn't have guessed that one, huh?).  Could be interesting. Maybe a lost city surrounded by walls of storms/hurricanes created by some event that occurred in the bermuda triangle centuries ago?

Location Choice

Hey guys,

Sorry I haven't contributed anything so far to this blog. Thanks to everyone for posting this wealth of information. So it looks like Brian wants each of us to focus on our own location. Maybe it's easier if we all pick a place that interests us, then build a skeleton plot around that, since the previous games just kind of jumped from one place to another. We can always just caulk the gaps with "fantasy logic."
Anyway, I think I'm going to work on thumbnails for Mongolia for this upcoming Saturday. Mongolia seems relatively untouched in the previous games (correct me if I'm wrong) and Genghis Khan's movement all over Europe and Asia makes it easy to connect some important artifact in there somewhere.
I'll post some reference images soon.