Design Brief 1 - Staging - Cityscape

I am going to research cityscapes.

I am a fan of sharp perspective drop-off's and prefer single point perspective images, and city streets are fantastic for that

From these kinds of views, you can see many types of building as well as people and that gives the whole image more of a perspective in size rather than depth.

Above is a screen of a Google Maps view of GTA. The buildings size reduces drastically over a very short space as the large buildings on the left and right of the street blocks further view down the road.

As cities are built and rebuilt in the same space over history, the architecture is varied. In one street, there may be architectural history ranging from 1500's churches to modern-day sky-scrapers. They have materials relevant to their time period; large granite blocks and stone for the older buildings, brick for the more modern houses and glass and steel for the hyper-modern offices. Many new build office buildings are inspired by architecture of the ages, such as a 1950's style building with glass walls and ceiling.

My attempt at a single-point cityscape

 Above is a close-up of the vanishing point in the centre of image and below is a close-up of the different architecture. The large glass building in the background and the fascias of the smaller buildings below

and the aerial view

I have mixed up the architecture slightly. The rounded building on the right is reminiscent of a 1940's building while the large glass building on the left is a newer building. I would imagine some of the buildings to have granite fronting like boutiques, and the others to be plain concrete, in varying colours of grey and cream. I've added character 'placeholders' to indicate action of the residents.

Design Brief 1 - Staging - Landscape

So I am going to look at some landscapes in games. I am currently playing The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and am very well acquainted with the scenery so I will choose that as my research point.

Skyrim is the new game from Bethesda and Zenimax Media Corp. An RPG with an open world, seasons, weather and open quests (and dragons) The terrain in the world is all unique and expansive

I decided that I wanted to do a landscape similar. The land in Skyrim is wild, but had the work of local humans dotted around, showing it is inhabited.

This is my run at a landscape.

It is a field scene through a fence near some trees at dawn.
It is one point perspective image with the vanishing point to the right.

The sky iis a mixture of red and blue to show the dawn.

My shadow skills need improvement 

It is based off of a real location. The fence is a newly painted, old wooden fence. It is smooth to the touch due to years of cows and horses rubbing themselves on the fence. It has a few old staples and nails in it from years of wire being placed and removed from the lower half. The trees are oak and are roughly 80 to 100 years old and fairly weathered for that age. The grass was wet with dew and the air brisk and chilly.The sun was not visible over the hills yet but was still casting a cold light. The fence stretches the length of the 4 acre wide field.

Design Brief Stage 1 - Staging

Right, so here are my first quick sketch ideas of cityscapes

I used the idea of my quick short story about a man working in a city for these sketches. I used the City Of London. More precisely, this image......

I tried to make it look like he was looking out of his window in his office building and seeing across the city.

The architecture of London is very varied. It has the very 1930's building next to Tower 42, while St Marys Axe is overly modern and covered in glass and steel.

                                                                                   

The other image is of a 1960's style office building with some modern features. This was my first idea for his office building. I based the design around a building from Bioshock in the city called Rapture

The building is of the third one on the far left. I had to re-design the bottom of the building as it was out of shot.

My idea of the building is a modernised building. The sloped roof made glass as well as the main body. The 'ribs' of the building being concrete with windows between the ribs. The lower part of the building would be made entirely out of concrete with smaller windows inlaid into the body and the lowest part having a glass front and glass doors. I would imaging the concrete to be quite rough, unlike plaster fronted buildings and probably cream in colour.

The view from above looking down is just a comparison to other buildings about its height. I would imagine this building to be much bigger than the surrounding buildings and probably the only one of its architecture style in the area. 

Design Brief Stage 1

So then, Stage 1.

Staging

Generate a pencil image of a landscape and city scape in linear and aerial view for use in a game environment.

Annotate with notes about materials, time period, scene, lighting, props etc.

Digital Texturing

Create a library of designs of human body parts and urban environments to reinforce the use of drawing for game design and it's relation to 3d modelling

Character Design

Generate pencil sketches for planning a character for Games, then digitize it. Sketches should include silhouette poses and action poses (front back top and side) Annotate with ideas about materials, textures, body mass, shape, anatomical observation, personality, props etc.