Okay, so since I kept forgetting to do a post about pitch week feedback and now it's time to do one about crit week feedback, I figure I'll just combine the two and show the progress between.
Here is my Pitch week presentation;
Honours Project - Pitch Week LMCS from
mcsheff90
The general feedback I got from staff about this was positive in relation to my ideas and the amount of background work and research I was doing into Narrative Theory and Design. They did say however that they wanted to see more practical work and to be honest, at this point my practical work was being neglected in favour of research and trying to create a substantial bibliography of published literature to draw some knowledge and insight from.
So taking the feedback in mind I started to conduct some practice based research and drew out a few quick sketches of how I thought Topher's room would look.
I tried to delve back into my days of doing perspective drawing during graphic comm but since it's been years since I've even attempted this I was really rusty. Still, these were only very quick sketches I wanted to get down before going to model the room in 3D.
Once again though, during to a summer-long hiatus from practice and using maya at all I found it slow getting back into the process and had forgotten quite a bit. I spent a few hours mucking around, making objects which I thought Topher would have in his room and which would depict some manner of her personality or give insight into some part of his life.
(for some reason some of the text in the above slideshow has gone a bit weird...not sure why but you get the gist of it...hopefully)
From doing this test (which is still unfinished and needs to be put to focus group testing) I found that I really need to improve my lighting and texturing skills. Brushing up on practical skills was also an element of feedback I got from staff which is fair enough considering I hadn't done anything of the sort all summer.
I also need to think about manageable ways of asking people questions and sit in on the focus groups and look at techniques for focus group testing. Improvements to be made with the room are including a lighting source, such as a bedside lamp or a ceiling light from which you can actually see the light being emitted. It was recommended I have a look at the Gnoman DVD'S on lighting and normal mapping skills for games, so I need to go to the library and give them a look.
Ryan also recommended the Maya Texturing and Lighting book so I'll need to try and get a copy for myself.
There were also suggestions that I should go and play Journey or look at the Art of Journey book, as the environment in Journey is about more than just being an environment, it's about an environment as an experience. I will also look into the environments in Uncharted, particularly Uncharted 3.
Ryan also suggested that I compare the scene in heavy rain with it's unnerving environment to an environment that makes you want to say (friendly final fantasy towns for example) and look at why that is. I also need to consider formalistic staging, and look at poetics in stories and why things work as devices.
Looking into visual poetry - creating scenes for functions or staging an action, ask "what happened here" in the scene and look into drawing the eye to certain things in order to reach a conclusion.
Looking at characters in their own environments I should contrast this and take them out of their comfort zone, so looking at the opening scene of farenheight as an example where the character is taken completely out of his comfort zone.
Sooooo......
OKAY. After all that, my next steps will be;
- Do some research into the lead artists on Heavy Rain, look at their other work and try and find out their methodology for work and their practices. Look at how their work in Heavy Rain was constructed and try to find interviews where they talk about the design process behind creating the extremely emotive environments in Heavy Rain.
- Play through the opening scene in Farenheight and take notes
- Improve 3D room test by getting some books on lighting and texturing and brushing up on practical skills by doing some more tutorials on normal mapping for games etc.
- revise "case study" participant test by producing the questions and getting approval and advice from supervisor before going ahead with another test.
- Finish case study on Heavy Rain and ensure that I have enough sources and references in it, built on from previous research into narrative and mise en scene, to make it substantial enough.
