Week 15: Container City

 Already missing the holidays, and having a group project first thing back isn’t really what I wanted. We got given the brief and everyone already seemed to have groups. Anxiety kicked in and I was already panicking about not having a group to work with. Great start back!

Luckily I found a group that needed one extra member, so our group is now 4 people. We started brainstorming ideas together asap.

This stage of a project is one of my favourites as you can really have a lot of fun thinking in every possible way the project could go. Keeping this stage relatively short (2-3 days) means it is inexpensive for time but is really worth every moment, as a well planned and thought out idea saves you countless headaches in the future.

We thought we could make better use of modular assets if our whole level was on a smaller scale than our original ideas. This would also mean our level would be more compact, but the textures and models would be of higher quality.

At the momment we are planning to o a level with different stages, a shady interior part, a market scene and finally, a small private club area to finish. I think this is way too ambitious but due some pushy team members we are going to wait until the feedback from our presentation next week to decide.

I tried some quick blockouts of my part of the level which was to be a few shady corridors where the player starts out and I did some concepts for potential containers. So far my area is all inside so I am making sure I make good use of artificial lighting. So far the dystopian feel is definitely prominent.

Initial ideas for some dodgy container contents.

3D blockout for a brothel/hotel concept, still a WIP

Concepting these I used a 3D base of the inside of some container shaped boxes (I had to change the render options in max to let me render the inside faces of planes.) This just meant I could focus on colours, props and ideas, instead of spending valuable time planning out perspective grids. We have a presentation next week, not sure what we’ll be showing for that but I’ll write about that next week!