Off The Map- (Part-7)

Week 25

Off The Map- (Part-7)

Week 25 was an exciting week, the new goal was much more approachable and I didn't have to think about the other scenes that would need a different variation on the same, wonderland style. Luckily I had a lot of the research already done and could even implement a few of the assets I had already created. I was advised to research existing environments around Oxford, however I ran into issues where wonderland as written by Lewis Carroll didn't line up with environments in the area. So I used an inspiring image online, that closely resembles my visualisation of wonderland.

Off The Map- (Part 6)

Week 24

Off The Map- (Part 5)

This post will be really short just catching up with new task and brief for the project. After a review from my tutors, we reached the conclusion that the environment I was working on was far too large to make a fully detailed, immersive and impressive scene. We decided that it was too ambitious for one person in the given time frame, therefore instead of making an unpolished and rushed environment that wouldn't look good on my portfolio, I would scale back development constructing only one of the scenes that I was going to work on, the rabbit house.

Off The Map (Part-5)

Week 23

Off The Map (Part-5)

This week my post will be pretty short during week 22 and and week 23 I was modelling the assets for my scene along with these assets I have shown in my previous week made a few other items to add some direction and variation to the world like a signpost to direct the player, as well as lamps, large leaves, mushrooms, lily pads and teacup fountains. I must say I have really enjoyed this process it was a nice way to see my concepts come to live in 3d. Also this was a good opportunity to model objects with greater detail.

Off The Map (Part-4)

Week 22- Week 23

Off The Map (Part-4)

Week 22 was all about modelling assets. Starting with a quick mood board on foliage, I moved on to develop many assets that are core to wonderland and some reusable assets that will help the world feel busy and alive. The picket fence was the first model of the day, an easy item to model that will look natural whilst providing borders for where the player can access so that they stay in the area. The picket fence alone would stick out and look unattractive so I decided to model a reusable rose and some foliage that I could fit through gaps in the fence in order to give the world border a nice, overgrown and natural look.

Off The Map- (Part 3)

Week 21

Off The Map- (Part 3)

This week my focus was level design, I used tools available in Unreal Engine 4 to sculpt the terrain of my landscape, making hills and valleys that added a natural feel to the surroundings. This task proved difficult because it was my first time using these tools so I had to use videos and other resources available online to teach me how to construct a landscape. Another issue I ran into was the scaling of the environment, I got round this problem by modelling a fountain to place in the map that helped me scale the environment, by eye, to a suitable level that fit the size of the playable character.

Off The Map( Part 2)

Week 20

Off The Map( Part 2)

I have had the time to study the book and other resources including meetings with tutors to discuss what my project will be.

I have to produce a scene where I include the tea party and the rabbit house. Because the individual scenes in the book I thought it would be a good idea to link these to parts of the book, that are pretty far apart, by using a forest environment and a path between them.

I decided to start off creating mood board around the rabbit house, this mood board contained anything remotely that looked like it belonged in wonderland and would be useful assets when constructing the rabbit house.

When I had enough information and imagery, I created quick concepts with photobashing techniques. It soon dawned on me that my approach had been very random, so I targeted my concepting towards creating houses that animals could live in.

With house concepts out of the way, I moved on to designing the landscape.

Off The Map- ( Part 1)

Week 19

Off The Map- ( Part 1)

This project was based around Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and was a competition sponsored by the British Library and GameCity. With materials such as maps, text and illustrations provided by the British Library, in a group of 6, we had to chose a theme to base our level around, these themes were Oxford, The Underground and The Gardens.

When I first heard that this was the basis of the task I was genuinely excited as I love the idea of a fairy tale world with a lot of seemingly random pieces, this project was going to push the creative part of my mind and I didn't need stay inside the realm of reality.

My excitement quickly turned into shock as I was informed that I wouldn't be working in a group of 6 like everyone else, but I would be on my own. This would have been okay if my brief was drastically smaller scale and was given clearly with proper guidelines and instructions. Instead I was given a scale around half of what the groups had to do, even half would be a monumental task for a single person.

To get myself going I constructed mood boards in order to give myself a creative direction and guide in the way I wanted to take this project. I also read the book to make sure that whatever I constructed remained true to the original tales.