Designing a Game World: Summative Assessment

Please read my formative assessment blog post first

Hello, hello! Due to the flu, I had to postpone my assessment by a week but I have been working hard trying to deliver this by the deadline despite the setback. In this blog post, I will talk about the process of creating a Witches Cottage interior based on a Tagar Culture artifact for my Building a Game World assessment.

To begin with, I will walk you through my thought process. When I was first given this assignment, I really struggled with creating thumbnails for this assignment so I decided to research my chosen artifact: the animal shaped tripod pot of Tagar culture, originating from Russia, for inspiration.

Going off of the idea that incorporating animals into artifacts was a common theme, I came up with the idea that a broom with an animal head would be a great way to subtly include it. In one of my thumbnails, I had drawn a broom with a snake head. I chose a snake as the animal fits perfectly into a shape of a broom. When I did my artist study, I looked into an artist that had experience with animal artwork.

I also attempted to incorporate the tripod legs onto my cauldron as I think it would've been a suitable place to incorporate the artifact directly into my piece. Though in the final render, it isn't visible, I have modelled the cauldron itself in Autodesk Maya with the three legs. 

Seeing as we recently learned how to 3D model potion bottles, I decided to incorporate my newly learned skill into the witches cottage. 

Following my toolkit sessions on perspective, this was the perfect opportunity to embody my new knowledge into my work. This project is also a showcase of my understanding of 2D principals.

Final Render

Pre-Production

I first began by creating quick thumbnails before starting my production. I was assigned to create 100 but I began running out of ideas so then I focused on specific things I wanted to include in my piece. Here are my thumbnails:

Following this, I began experimenting with perspective and composition for a potential idea on what I had envisioned. 

Initially, I started this project as a 3D only project but I haven't learnt enough 3D skills in order to base my entire project on it. Instead, I modelled furniture that I didn't know how to draw in the correct perspective. Then I placed a screenshot of them onto a canvas and traced over it before sketching out the rest of the environment. I began blocking out everything with the colours I wanted to use but got a little bit side-tracked and started shading little bits in. I struggle with going through the natural process of sketching -> blocking out -> shading/rendering and tend to go with the flow. 

I didn't think I was going to make it by the extension because I added so many intricate details but on the other hand, I had exactly in mind what sort of character was living in this witches cottage. Including things like a spilled potion bottle and messy pile of books, I wanted to show to the audience that this character is disorganised and chaotic. With colour, I decided to do a very purple based environment because I associate the colour with magic and mystery as witches are associated with such themes. 

I had based my composition based on a birds eye view orthographic so that I had an idea on where I wanted everything to be placed. I followed it as a prompt / base whilst improvising the extra details in the production.

Production

Here was my initial start of production, I was modelling different furniture. Below is a cauldron, table, bookshelf and beginning to model rocking chair, which are the key things I want to include in my final piece. 

I have applied skills I have learned over my artist toolkit sessions as well as my prior knowledge of Maya when I was studying VFX & Animation in college. I decided to be ambitious with this project.

Whilst working on this project, I have decided to take a different turn to create a more organic design for my final piece. I am working on incorporating the rocking chair into the design.

Here I have changed the shape of the bookshelf to be more rough and curved to give it that look of wonky wood. I have also modelled a book and duplicated it, placing it in inorganised patterns to give my witches cottage the appearance of a messy den.

This is the outer shape of my model to give an idea how the space is shaped. There are 3 spaces in the house, with an indicator of a second floor that I won't display for simplicity sake. I have divided the witches cottage into a witchcraft area, a sleep area, and a cooking area.

After realising I was struggling to model and texture everything in time, I used the 3D environment as a base for starting a sketch. This proved to be very helpful because I didn't know how to draw a rocking chair in perspective.

With this, I began the production. This is the stage where I began sketching out everything from the birds eye orthograph. By the end, the sketch looked something like this, while beginning to block out the colours for my project.

Following the sketch, I began by colouring the furniture. I used Ibis Paint X because given that something goes wrong, I can use the transform perspective tool. My graphics tablet on my PC also began acting up so I felt it was easier to draw with my Samsung tablet. I continued to block out my colours according to the sketch.

At this point, I had made sure all the little bits had been coloured, although I began putting a bit too much detail into the potion bottle. I had incorporated my knowledge of colour theory into colouring the books. 

Below, I have included the whole process of the drawing in a 5 minute video. After blocking out all of the colours, I had merged the layers and duplicated it, decreased the saturation and value. I also duplicated the original layer and increased the saturation and value. Then on the darkened layer, I erased all the areas where I wanted light. Likewise, on the lightened layer, I erased everything that was in the shadows. This helped create light in my environment. 

After this, I wanted light filtering through the window, I began by creating streaks of light with the add and overlay blending modes and motion blur before smudging it and erasing any part that light would not pass through. 

For objects, I decided to go for orange/yellow light using overlay layer and purple shadows and red in-between using multiply to emphasise the sunset filtering through the window and lighting the objects in the room. 

Next, I began adding secondary light from the cauldron brewing and fire from the fireplace and the candle. Depending how large the light source is, would dictate how much the surroundings would be affected by it.

To create the flame, I used a mixture of normal, add and overlay and smudge tool as well as motion blur. This made it look like the flame is shifting. I applied the same effect to the cauldron to create a mysterious smoke glowing from it.

Lastly for the extra atmospheric feel, I merged all layers and duplicated it before applying a lens blur on the top layer and adding a blending mode and setting the opacity to about 30%, more or less. This makes the objects make like they're reflecting light because of how strong the lighting is.

This was a lengthy process and I had increased the canvas size to about 5000 by 2000 so that every detail was still high quality and didn't blur. This was important so that when you zoom in, you can still make out all the clear lines and details.

Conclusion 

I think my attempt at dynamic lighting was successfully executed considering I had never experimented with it before. I am proud of how my newly learnt skills were put into action with this project. 

I think it would've been improved if I could've completed the whole thing in Autodesk Maya because I was really enthusiastic about creating my first project in 3D but I overestimated how difficult modelling and texturing was with the little time I had.