Environment PreProduction

Medieval Village Preproduction

For one of my Final Major Projects in my final University year I will be making a Medieval style fantasy 'village in the mountain'. In my preproduction I designed arguably the most important building in the whole village: The tavern. 

After the usual image research, I got started my own designs by drawing some silhouettes of different buildings. The idea was to try and get the building looking interesting without the use of colour or too much detail.

After this I took each silhouette, added line detail and coloured them in traditional medieval cream walls and dark wood timbers. I started with the two similar looking buildings. I like the wonky element I added to Tavern 01, and the chimney I put on the side of Tavern 02. 

Tavern 03 is my least favourite design, though I like the tower at the back. If I did this design in future, I would adapt it slightly to incorporate the tower better, as it looks stuck on as an afterthought. I might even turn it into some sort of windmill and make it taller. 

 Taverns 04 and 05 look quite similar in design. I like them both but don't feel as though they have an overly 'Tavern' feel like the others. There wouldn't be a wide enough floor space in any one area to have a communal feel to the inside. Tavern 04 would probably work better as a market area, and Tavern 05 could work as a small set of houses, though I like the square tower in the corner. 

This is the final design I chose. It is an adaptation of Tavern 02. I chose this one because It would host a huge square footage inside, giving the room for a large number of tables and a big communal bar. It would also be able to host several guest rooms upstairs and a couple of 'private meeting rooms' out the back. It would also look like one of the largest buildings in the village, which is handy when all residents will be there on a nightly basis. 

I then took my design into Maya and did a quick block out of the building, just to make sure it would hold up in 3D and not look too boring. With a little tweaking it started to look quite good. When I get into proper development however, I will make the walls a bit more wonky like in design 01, to give it a more fantasy 'top heavy' feel.

I then went into finer detail, looking into the different types of tiles I could put on the roof. In the end I went for the plain square ones, as it is more practical than the diamond and the straw, and not as flouncy as the scalloped.

After deciding on the tiles, I looked into other variations: Whether I wanted a flat roof or a pointy one, the different chimneys I could make use of and a doodle of a dome i'd seen on some buildings around my house.

This is the final building design, based on the dimensions in the previz. I added all the timber detail and the windows. I went with a simple diamond shaped metal cross hatch for the windows, as I worked in an old pub once with windows like that and I always liked them. 

 Final Turnaround

Archer Pre-Production

Archer Pre-Production

As part of a collaborative project, I have been tasked to design and produce an archer, to go with a number of other heroes. They will be defending a Dwarven city, which is under siege from an army and a giant armour-plated bull.

I began my pre-production by thinking of different poses and expressions the archer would pull, in an effort to establish a form of characterisation for her. I believed this would inspire me for her outfit.

After the poses and expressions I drew up some quick design sketches. I included two male designs, even though the poses were female, as I wanted to explore more costume diversity. I looked at a typical 'wood elf' style costume of soft leather and simple coverings, a colder, more human archer with a padded doublet and a fur cloak (inspired by the free folk from game of thrones) and a more 'World of Warcraft' inspired armour plated, but hardly covered style archer. I decided then to split the costume down to its key parts (Below)

Here I took the torso, the arms and the lower body and looked at them in more detail. I eventually settled on a cross between the 'wood elf' and the 'world of warcraft' style. I chose the bottom right design from both the lower body and the torso pages, and the top right arm design. These were my base designs for putting the costume together later.

After getting the basic costume designs done, I decided to move on to one of the key features of the face: the eyes. I wanted the eyes to stand out from the rest of the features to give her a more ethereal look. Here (above) I have looked at different colours to find the most striking design. I experimented with several 'otherworldly' colours too, but eventually settled on the top right green, or the purple below it. I would choose later once the colour scheme had been settled on.

Here I moved on to hair styles and colours. I experimented with many different designs, and ruled some out based on her character class. Since she is an archer, I thought it would be unwise to have certain hairstyles (namely the long flowing ones), although there are some exceptions to the rules like Merida in brave. I also had to consider both production and render time when deciding on her hairstyle. As you can see from the hair colour page, I chose a loose plait. I also chose the ginger-red hair, as it will stand out nicely from the armour plates and leather.

Another important aspect of the archer is her bow. Here I have looked at several bow designs, and incorporated them into my own. I found it quite difficult to make the bow look practical but still have it look impressive. Eventually I chose a cross between two, the final design of which can be seen below.

This is the final design for my archer. As you can see I put all the costume parts together with the hair, and added a few things to make them all work together. I also reworked the bow design and added a quiver to attach to her back.

Here I worked on the colour schemes for her. I tried to think about her background here: where did she come from? what climate is it? 

From these questions I began to look at two themes I have seen/read about elves, seasons and the elements. In the seasonal schemes I ruled out summer as a potential scheme because summer would have involved too many yellows, which could have been hard to turn into a natural looking colour scheme for an elf or a human. Also, I left out the Earth element from the elements page, as I had already covered a lot of that from the seasons. Personally, I liked the winter and the water designs, however our team made the decision to go for a more natural scheme, so she doesn't stand out too much from the rest of the scene and take eyes off the rest of the shot.

Here is my final colour scheme, using one of the more natural colour palettes. I chose a lighter, softer leather for the shirt and the chaps, to aid movement, and a thicker, metal edged leather for the armour pieces. The bow will also have metal filigree designs to add light armour and detail.

Final Colour Turnaround