First week of FMP!

Week one of FMP! How very exciting! I’m still in shock that the end of my Game art Degree is coming at me faster than a speeding train. It’s around now that I’m thinking man I want to do all of that again but alas I think the big bad world is calling me and I had better plunge into it with a good strong degree on my belt.

I remember before Christmas feeling completely miserable with my FMP proposal and that it was rejected due to its epic scale. I see now more clearly than ever that what I was proposing is just utterly ridiculous to contemplate completing in a mere 20 weeks. A year maybe I could do it single handed but now no way. So with that as a blow I went back to the drawing board. I was still trying to pin down exactly what I wanted to do during week one! Thank God however my new brief came to me during the first few days. Going on the advice of my tutors to shrink the size of the environment I wanted to build by just zeroing in on a market square from my original game environment. I knew straight away I wanted to do something gothic. My original proposal had been to recreate a Victorian gothic market square but there was no real spark of inspiration with that idea. I felt no drive or attachment to it. Dont get me wrong I really like Victorian gothic but I wanted a spin on it that would be interesting and demonstrate me as a game artist.

During this first week I spent a lot of time in the library looking into Victorian London architecture, life style, fashion…just anything and everything. As much as I liked all the material I was collating I couldn’t find my inspire spark. I went back to look at what made me so enthusiastic about my original proposal. I made the link with monsters and gore and that was it. What if I made a market place themed around monsters…better yet demons! Victorian society had a very strong link with demonology and religion. French author Colin de Plancy published a book during 1800’s entitled Dictionnaire infernal (no prizes for guessing what that translates to.) Within the pages he lists demons believed to inhabit the realms of hell at the time and rough descriptions of them. Pictures were added to the book later. Looking through this list I found some demons I could very easily tie to gimmicky stall ideas such as Buer the demon of healing, charms and remedies. Every game needs a healing store so this demon lends itself perfectly to creating an asset like this. Another is Alastor the executioner….weapon store anyone? and My personal favourite The Beezlebub pub!

Old white hart

Hospital Entrance

Highstreet lay out

Green dragon court

Housing collection

Vender carts

Borough market

Montague entrance

With this new exciting concept in my head I went to work writing up my FMP proposal form. I identified the key assessment criteria for my project to be marked on they are as follows.

• Present a range of supporting concept art that illustrate the intent of the environment.

• Display creative interpretation of the set genre and time period ( Victorian England)

• Produce a range of industry ready 3D models and game assets

• Produce a coherent set of assets within the context of the game environment

• Introduce light, atmosphere and mood to enhance the game level experience.

With these goals clear in my mind to strive for I began putting together some boards of inspiration, mainly Victorian structures. Through the advice of a tutor I thought it would be best to take one section of my proposed market place and take it through production to prove proof of concept and to identify exactly what I want to achieve with each asset. I knew I wanted a central focus point of my market such as a statue or fountain so what better asset to start with.

Town annotated

Enviroment idea board 1

Dark organic inspiration

Aldgate pump

To start designing this asset I took a real fountain located in London during the Victorian era. A central water pump named Aldgate pump. Using this as a central point I quickly got down my scribble ideas these being the rush of instant thoughts the second I think up a concept. They can be seen below. My ideas range from just redrawing the fountain and changing the topper to a subtle screaming face, to crafting a whole new sculpture to sit on top of the podium. Looking at these scribble ideas there are a few aspects I really liked and things I learnt that I will need to carry through my design process. Firstly altering the shape of the original Victorian structure too drastically loses the Victorian tie. So when designing structures keep to the source material as much as possible. Working forward I knew my design would be keeping the tapering cuboid structure originating from the Aldgate pump. Secondly I really like the manic look almost playful comic look of the demon. I don’t really want to create a whole demon to sit ontop of my fountain that’s practically making a character and to do it in 3 or 4 weeks is too much of an undertaking so when designing avoid character like assets such as arms, hands, torsos and feet. Just because of the tight time scale Ive worked out for myself won’t accommodate days of Brushing and issues.

Taking this knowledge learnt from my initial play, along with mood boards created through the week I then began designing the central fountain. It was at the beginning of this design stage where I had the idea to switch out water for blood in the fountain. You cant get much more ghoulish than that! This revolutionised how I designed the fountain after all blood seems most menacing when theres only a small trickle of it suggesting the worst has occurred. With this blood pool collecting at the basin of my fountain idea I thought it would be extra grim if something was feeding on the blood to grow and that was where the introduction of bloodbind (self invented weed that grows neat pools of blood) partially inspired by the blood thorn plant in Bethesda’s RPG Oblivion and partially from the Queen of hearts concept from Alice Madness returns.

My favourite concept is the final one number 9 which demonstrates perfectly the harmony between Victorian London, Gothic horror and comical stylized I was aiming to achieve. Next week I feel I need to start by producing a piece of concept art that can both answer the assessment criteria and give me a strong foundation to work from in terms of visuals and texture.