Week 7: Visual design

This week in visual design we were set our new 'Village' project and given a fairly strict style guide to work from. We were put into groups for this project so that we could all be assigned a different building to go into one level.

We got together and randomly assigned buildings I then emailed the list to the people that weren't in the class at the time. I got the farmhouse and after some very early research I already had a pretty strong idea of how it would look so I figured that concepting would be quite easy.

For this project I decided to learn from my last in terms of I wish I'd have done more research on the subject matter so that when it came to my own concepts I'd have a better understanding and therefore produce better ideas.

I created a mood board so that I had all the useful images in one place rather than all on my pinterest but I also put some people in traditional costume and other aspects of 'farms' so I could keep in mind the general 'farmhouse' vibe.

I then did some studies from some of the images. I find drawing things forces me to look harder at the images and think and understand how they work rather than just glancing over them.

First round of idea generation

To begin with I started drawing out various ideas with the original base shape in mind. I thought starting here would be better than starting with silhouettes as this project doesn't rely as much on a strong silhouette like the rock did, plus the 3D elements can't be seen from a 2D silhouette.

Developing ideas

I really liked the idea of a wooden/plaster building with a little brick bit coming off the side which could be used for things like pigs or storage or something. Instead of just settling with that idea I decided I should keep on developing it to get a stronger idea.

I experimented with a stone base and an elevated top but while doing research I had actually read that the richer people had stone bases as well as glass windows so since my house is a farmhouse that isn't generally associated with richness I thought I better leave that idea.

 

It was when I had got this far that I considered silhouettes- they aren't massively different but I wanted the shape of the roof to really give a good impression of the building and make it look quite reserved and soft rather than a big towering and sharp building. 

After the silhouettes had influenced the shape of the roof as well as the addition of the chimney I was able to refine these ideas further into something I was really pleased with. 

Colour testing

When I had got to this point I decided to start modelling while I was in the labs and carrying on with things like this while I was at home as the colours only effect the texturing and I needed to make valuable use of my time while I had the opportunity to use 3DS max in the labs since as I have a mac I'm unable to use it at home. 

By the end of the week I had managed to get my model this far and I'm quite pleased with my progress! I'm planning on getting more details and information in there when I next work on it but overall it hasn't been a bad week in terms of productivity!