Stylised shop front
This week I decided that I was going to do the shop front brief which is the fully stylised environment brief. You are told to concept, model and hand paint textures of a shop front and partial inside. There are 4x1024's and 15k tris.
Starting off this week I gathered loads of reference going through different ideas and cutting them down through moodboards. I originally wanted to do a pet shop, coffee shop, book shop or robot shop; at one point I even wanted to stack all the shops on top of each other but quickly threw that out the window when I realised the tri count we were given. After looking at lots of different images on the pinterest and artists in books I decided I wanted to do a robot repair shop with the texturing style of Ian McQue's artwork.
Initial ideas and styles
Film and book reference
Final shop reference board
After deciding on what I wanted to do I got into doing some sketches shown here:
However I found it quite hard to come up with ideas so I decided to take it into 3D and model it and then attempt to paint over it as shown here:
But I wasn't happy with how things were looking and felt like I should try a different form of concepting. I got some help from peers and they suggested that I choose exactly what I want on the building and work with that. So I decided to try doing some silhouettes using Ian McQue's work as reference. Here's what the silhouettes look like:
I got more feedback from peers saying that they looked too busy, however they did like 5, 9, 10 and 13 so I drew over them to define the shapes and design. I then took 13 into 3D as it was the most liked to see what it would look like.
Around about here I hit a brick wall and was unsure what to do as all of the designs I was coming up with I felt didn't work and I didn't like them. So I spoke to some peers again and they suggested I tried a different method of concepting as the silhouetting wasn't working. I then started drawing a bash kit to make some shops from; I started doing this but soon realised it wasn't going to work and decided to go back to painting over all of the silhouettes that I had drawn.
The bash kit concepts
After painting over the rest of the silhouettes I found some of the designs stronger than the ones I took into 3D before so I took these (12 and 18) into 3D and iterated on them inside 3DS Max.
As you can see from the renders I ended up choosing silhouette 12 and iterated on it, so now it has an open mouth and spring in the design. After finally coming up with a design that I was happy with I did some values inside 3D shown here:
I then chose the strongest one and took it into photoshop and did some colour variations using Ian McQue's colour schemes.
I also spoke to a tutor on friday that loved my design and gave me some cool ideas for the inside where there is a massive spiral staircase hugging the inside wall so that the repair-man can get all of the parts he needs that are on shelves inside the head. However I might not be able to incorporate this due to tri limit, so I might just have to stick with the original ladder idea.
That's all I have managed to get done this week due to the struggles with concepting and I have also had to take a lot of time out to do things related to off the map. Next week I will be working on colour and just tweaking some of the above variations to be more balanced. I will then have a final design I will be able to model it, test the scale in UE4 then unwrap and start texturing by the end of the week. If I stick to this plan I should be able to get the project done on time to a good standard.