Plan update.

In terms of my personal health, I am recovering, I seem to be stuck at about 90% recovery for the past week or so. :( But everything is still going okay.

Depending on how much time we have left will determine how much of this we get done, and to what degree of quality it will be done at. Hopefully it's good enough as I really do want to get a good grade, especially how I've put so much effort into this whole thing.


Mouse starts in its home, through hole into Dining room inside a house, from a point of view of the rat, goes through a crack, street view. <- Vague, come up with through the group. Upon coming up with my interpretation of the idea, input was also given from Gerome at certain points. I stayed behind with Dominique to start the storyboard, we ran out of time. I explained to her what the below meant, as she was to do a rough storyboard by the time that I got home today. However incomplete it was, the interpretation given was good, it's still being done. Hopefully it's done by the time I get home from work so I can start/help with the animatic. At least everything is finalised now, all we've got to do is actually do it. When I finish work, me and Gerome are going to compose the backing track. My elaboration of this idea is as follows (Discussion with Dominique): The story begins as the camera pans on to the seemingly empty mouse hole, only to be described as so from the ambient light. Upon the camera zooming in on this mouse hole we discover that it is infact that the mouse’s home, and that we are looking from the mouse’s perspective.

(Bearing in mind that this POV will reflect and mimic the movement of a mouse. Mice move quickly, then break, then quickly move again.)

The mouse comes out of this hole, as the audience is exposed to a familiar room, the dining room. At the edge of the camera, a decomposing arm is seen at the far edge of the camera screen. History suggests that mice would normally take the route amongst the wall to avoid detection, and would leave trail of stains that are pretty much impossible to wash out, hence the invention of skirting boards.

So, the mouse takes its route amongst the wall (where the skirting boards would be of course) and naturally this is the simplest course. Until it encounters a standalone chest of draws. This chest of draws however is tightly wedged to the ground, with a tiny gap to the wall for the mouse to pass through, or tightly wedged to the wall, where the mouse will pass underneath the chest of draws.

The mouse then continues along the sides of the wall to encounter more objects. Tools on the ground left by the occupant of the home. The mouse simply just navigates through and over them speedily, to make its way to its first goal: The crack in the wall by the door.

This crack in the wall is literally right next to the hinges of the door, and is the rat’s first goal. The rat then makes its way to this crack, and proceeds through the mellow light of the sun. (late sunset) to find it’s way on a London street, after hours.

The second it’s gone through the hole the rat proceeds down a slightly dark, London street, where most of the people have already left the streets into their homes, however there is still sound of people in the background, footsteps, chatter, shouters, town criers. The lot. The mouse proceeds down this street, weaving through puddles (ripples or whatever shown via the blowing wind), bits of paper and leaves blowing in the brief and sudden winds, dodging ditches of sewage, underneath carts, and between peoples legs / footsteps, till it reaches what it was looking for, food, only for another rat to come in the view of the camera, and take it. REVISION: The mouse follows the scent of what it smells down the street.

The mouse then pauses, and looks around, then looks up, and realises the scent is coming from above, from a particular building. The rat then proceeds to navigate across the street, only to be interrupted by a person pushing a cart. Rat either gets hit, or pauses, and jumps through the wheel of this cart to get to the other side.

The building in question on the other side is a tall building. This is the start of the second objective.

The rat begins to scale this building by climbing up a drainage pipe. This drainage pipe happens to be made out of fail and falls apart, leaving the rat suspended 2nd floor off the ground on a very slim ledge. The rat then proceeds to navigate through on this ledge to find another route, going underneath the statuette heads (decorations we saw at the museum and on buildings) At the edge of the ledge, the rat, climbs up onto one of the decorations, which allows it to navigate to the next floor. Still on a ledge, the rat makes its way along a straight ledge, pausing rapidly and looking around, and down. The rat continues to make its way down the ledge, when a window suddenly opens (the window is stiff, person pushes really hard, illustrated via sounds), cutting off the rat, and its path, the rat does not react quick enough and makes it lose its equilibrium (balance).

Once the mouse regains its balance, the window is still there (detail of the window shown, cracks in the window, a bucket is shown through the window throwing out waste. Window then closes again. The rat continues to navigate to the end of the ledge then spots another drainage pipe, and climbs inside this pipe.

Inside this pipe, you see remnants of bits of whatever, and liquids. This pipe ends up having a crack in it, in which the rat goes through. Pauses, sniffs, then jumps out through the crack. This crack leads to a 3rd floor ledge, where a window is slightly ajar, just enough for the scent of the food to travel out.

This is where you hear an owls noise, and the rat being jerked, then, END.

Mouse hunt. Point A to B, shown to me by Dommeh. It's a mission, it's a course, exactly how our end result is envisioned to be, with the replacement of natural things such as water, or people, instead of the hundreds of mouse traps. Although, our rat isn't going to be nearly as awesome as this one is going to be.

Currently, Lily and Sarah are working on building designs / props. I shall concrete the idea and storyboard with Dommeh.


Insert all rat research herarerea

Pipeline

Pipeline

Research – Finished pretty much – Carried out primarily and secondary, internet, as well as going to places to cover the brief

Majority completed as of 11/11/2010

Initial Idea – Ye Olde London. Prior / just before the start of the Black Death Plague.

Idea finalised, rat navigating through a street in london dodging various obstacles, rats eye POV. Crossover to a character POV when rat dies / goes out of shot.

Completed as of 11/11/2010

Environmental thought – Refine how the environment is going to look, how it's going to feel, how the character sounds / music / feel / atmosphere is going to look and feel.

Initial Sketches – Draw poses of the character / rat, as well as the street / building with all objects / thought out angles / shots– Carried out via drawing tablet. – To be completed by 20/11/2010

Basic model - Maya

Refined Model – Maya

Rigging - Maya

Texture – Maya <- All of which given a time scale of 4-5 weeks.

Lighting - Maya

Mapping - Maya

Render - Maya

:O

Now, before I start commenting on these images, let me state that ALL of these images we're taken by Lily and Sarah, as while I, Dominique, and Gerome went to the zoo, they went to Rochester. Why? Rochester still has VERY similar building geometry and floors, and walls from around the 1400 hundreds. Which means, generally buildings there are going to be quite similar to the sort of style we should convey.

Wall supports / deco.

Decoration. These seemingly random bits of decoration used to be heads. Statue heads mind you, but heads nontheless. Obviously replaced.

Floor patterns from that era too, apparently (confirmed) some places in London still have these floors. A really nice brick texture.

Windows! Either a standard 4 panel split, or crosshatch windows were generally the most used windows during that point in time. Again, a great piece of knowledge we can use to create our windows.
Brick tex-trusion. Yes that's a made up word. Anyway, this decoration is totally useless, serves no function. There purely for decorative purposes.

Greater example of the irregular built floors, a common build design from houses / designs from the era.

History suggests (confirmed) that particular streets of that era were actually so close that you could virtually shake your neighbours hands, straight from the comfort of your own window. This is also a very important factor as the street that we're going to replicate is similar to this in size.

Great texture for us to replicate. I don't think i'll do one quite as extruded as this, but generally that's the idea.

Lovely stone wall.

Drainage. - Unfortunately, research suggests that drainage did not exist in the era we're going to replicate. Instead, they just had (few houses) paths to the street in which waste could be poured down. SOOO sanitary.
This is also quite an important picture, as it shows the condition of a seemingly old house. Purely by reference in which we can use this to our advantage.




Church. Purely for reference if we actually do decide to model a church.
Another example of the extrusions on the houses. You can pretty much see it on every house in this example. Also notice that almost all of these houses have border ledges.

And the street. Now. Obviously the pavement has been reworked, many times over. But in terms of the detail of the brick, it was quite similar to how it would of been. Uneven shaped bricks, placed together with moderate effort to create a seemingly level ground, although, totally uneven. This is the basis of which I'm going to use to create the floor.

Another example of an extruding house from the front.

Here upwards photographs taken by both Lily and Sarah. As stated before, this is just another example of a currently existing house in rochester, showing the extrusions.

Like the houses in rochester (taken by lily and sarah) The main thing to note about these buildings is that they all have floors protruding from the first. So, coming out of the map, being unbalanced.

Another interesting image showing the layout of a house. Notice the extrusions on the base model as the stories pile up? This is common, and pretty much shown on almost every single house in that era that has more than one story. Usually extruding from the front, but some houses actually extrude from all sides and are lined up against another house, or wall, or between two houses.

Interior of a house of a similar era. Just showing the layout of what the average house would be like. This was more later, though, and for rich people. Unfortunately, during the era we're doing and in London, pretty much only poor people lived there at that time. Very unhygienic poor people at that. A breeding ground for disease and ailments.

The little villager there standing next to the house actually made me lol quite a bit.

This is probably the most important image amongst all the images here. It SPECIFICALLY shows what houses in the 1350s-1750's looked like. All houses made during this period and after for a couple hundred years were based on this design.

Archway - Door. Patterns from that particular era. I don't know if we're actually going to have any archways in our project, but if we do, we know what to base it off. Wood. The pattern on the wood has been recurring quite often amongst other designs that I've reviewed earlier. Decorative plaques and so forth.

Another chest. Taken by Oly again. Decorative purposes. Same as the other chests I've commented on.
Again, more clothing from this era. Just shows the sort of clothing average citizens would wear on the streets during that time. This set is specifically described as a medium-low class workers outfit. In terms of relevance, if we decide to go ahead with the whole character showing in our project, then it means that we can use inspiration from this to design our characters.

Bucket. Water bucket. Bucket bucket. We're going to have props like these so it was quite handy that there we're images like these in the London Museum.

Following pictures taken by Oly Walters.

So, whilst I went to the zoo with Gerome, Oly and Dominique, Lily and Sarah went too.... Rochester! Why? You'll soon find out. Later on during the day Oly went to the London museum, to gather more information / Research.

Zoo

Mood : Calm. Still got a bit of time to go. Unfortunately, as of yet, the laptop which I ordered about a month ago is still yet to come. Even after multiple ETA's from them, I still haven't recieved. Why am I calm? Because I still have just over 4 weeks to go until christmas, so I'm not THAT worried at the moment. Although, it would be nice to start some work soon.



Butterfly!! Now, the reason this image was taken, as well as the video, is that the environment created for these beauties was actually done really really well. It actually felt like you were in a place like that, say for example a jungle. It's this aspect that I wanted to convey in our animation. A simulation of another environment.

Rats getting eaten by these huge birds. I guess, for some, this was too sightly? The area around these birds was pretty much like completely deserted..

Poor rat feed. D: - Primary research for rats in the street of our environment. Why? Because these are the animals which carry the black plague. This is also going to be the movement of the camera in our animation. The reason why I want to get the attributes of the rat down is so that I can hopefully try and mimic the movement, and characteristics of the rat, hopefully make it seem realistic enough. That also obviously depends on how we carry it out. At this stage Dom and Lily are going to do the animation, however that is subject to change depending on how much time we have left.

King of the arena. This guy just pretty much sat here watching over all the others, being a total badass. It was funny because all the other ones were play-fighting, and generally being mischievous. Again, feeling totally at home in this created environment.

BIRDS! This bird as totally awesome, sitting there, enjoying sitting on the branch. Minding it's own business. I tried to stroke it, but it flew away, many times. :(

Semi - relevant, but first trip to the zoo! Looking at fake habitats in order to create a homely atmosphere for the inhabitants.

It's actually pretty weird. This was a very very cold, and rainy day, but funnily enough, none of the animals seemed to care much, as it pretty much seemed normal to them, apart from the tiger crying cause it was cold :(

The makeshift habitats were actually done quite well, some places were a LOT hotter than others, and some were a little cooler. Now, you may think that all of this is irrelevant, but in my opinion it isn't. All of these habitats are makeshift. Totally fake, yet they are made in a way to simulate their original habitats, to make the animals / insects feel at home. It was this aspect to the visit which made the visit important, to see how I could use what I saw to make the environment seem... feasible. Recreating an old place is going to be hard. Thankfully, we live in London and know how gloomy and grey it is, this should hopefully be quite simple to simulate.

Watch some of the brief video documentaries below for some short laughs / informative response.

This guy was cold though, and I felt sorry for him. It also made me realise how ignorant some people can be *cough*religion*religion*MUST WATCH ALL OF THESE. FOR THE LULZ! :D

VA + British museum + Zewwww! (zoo)

Everything in terms of imagery on this section is relevant from the 1200-1500 section. Pretty much anything up until the great fire of London would likely be preserved as further research suggests.


Reason for this is anything within this period in Britain / London would be relevant material, and material we could consider for usage within our animation.

How do I feel at this point in time? Quite good? It's not everyday that you get to visit places like this. Although this was pretty much mandatory for research purposes, and there wasn't that much material available, I did quite enjoy the whole process, and the facts. I've personally done quite a bit of research so far. The black death, the status of living conditions in that time, how the plague happened, etc. Heh. Moving on....

Epic giant sword?No relevance what so ever.

Random guy whos not in our group + sarah :D Okay I'm joking, well, semi. We know who the guy is, he's just not a part of our group.

Geroomee - The nooby noob noob. He's good at input with certain ideas.

ME D: + Dom :D - THE LEADER. THE BOOS. THE BOOOOOSSSS. THE EPIC AWESOMENESS OF AWESOMENESS. Although I have no management skills. Why? Because I can't force people to work. I don't like doing it, I don't like making people feel uncomfortable :( Obviously that's going to have to change at somepoint.

Oh, and Dom is the sub-manager along with Lily. They're both noobs.

:D

Sarah :D - Also likes naughty anime ;D She's cool. And she likes coffee. She's not quite the gamer. She's the fanfiction lover amongst the group. Naughty fanfiction. xD

Lileh :D - The gamer addict. Give her a choice between 50K or playing Xbox for a day and she'll choose the Xbox, no doubt. M i rite? + she likes naughty anime ;D

MONIES! :O

COINS! Purely because they look cool, but at this point I had an idea which I was going to integrate into the main one. Scattered coins along the floor. Why? Because people are going to start dying =[ They're going to lose their monies. xD

Decorative purposes. These are objects which would be put on certain houses. Why? Currently there's no real explanation except for purposes of fear. Well, for human heads anyway. There's also gargoyle heads and so forth usually put on church walls, as gargoyles are supposed to 'fend' off evil spirits. Apparently.. Makes no sense, but yeah.

This photo isn't actually of a door. It's more of a window, but you probably guessed that already anyway. Again, same as below, it was actually important to get information on what windows looked like back then. As I'm pretty sure that it's not going to be as modern as our windows are today. Quite to our surprise, our windows today aren't that much different. Just made better, and obviously using better materials.

Door - One that could be easily replicated in terms of design / style. In my opinion it was important and both lucky of us to stumble upon this. Why? Doors have been around for a very long time, this gave us pretty much an exact idea of what doors around that period should look like. So for our project, doors similar to this in design (wood (looks like oak-ish) iron framing, should be something to heavily consider when texturing / modelling our doors.

Priests robe / cloak. Right. Since at this point we're still considering whether to have characters or not in our project, it was important to know what sort of clothing would be seen. We're not planning on having faces shown, just limbs and a bit of drapery here and there. Now, we all know what sort of clothes people wore back then, and generally what they looked like, but this pretty much confirms it all. Tons of folds, hanging down, with an intricate design.

More boxes. Mainly for the construction of the object and the textures.

Another chest from the 1350s. Again, just for decorative purposes. May serve as a future texture for furniture / similar. From what I can see, it's mainly the tint and quality of wood which seems to be quite common amongst all these woods. They're all stained.

This particular item caught my attention. Mainly because of the fact that the drawing on it were quite funny. How this would help with our project? Not much. We're not doing much of an interior, but in the sense of this stuff is within our era, it could be helpful for future designs.



Various patterns. These images were taken purely for decorative purposes. For example, textures and patterns on improvised object of which we may consider using.


I took photos of these purely because they were quite interesting. In terms of what purpose they could serve towards our final project, not too sure as of yet.

Another unusual object

^ As this image describes, (in direct reference to the image below) this bench end is also something intriguing. Not only is the style in terms of pattern recreated on many objects during that period, but it seems this recurring theme of a 'flower' seems to be engraved onto this as well.

Miniature shrine - These things were apparently dangled from ceilings, or from a priests hand burning incense. As indicated by the description above, these objects tell the story of Christ's life from birth to death, while burning incense to acknowledge this. This was seen as a sign of appreciation in churches in England of the time. Not so much relevant as we will possible not see much of the inside of a building, but the design of the object could lead us to developing objects of the same style to use as decoration maybe? Nothing says gothic like this to be honest, which is ironic as it's about HESUUUS. (Jesus)

Refer to above

Self explanatory. Same object, different camera views. Purpose? To see it in a 3 dimensional form, to see how the shapes fit together! This one isn't fit for a great lighting demonstration, as the lighting is coming from a weird angle both below and above, where the lower light is the strongest.

Building top! - This is a miniature model of the top half of a cathedral in London, sat on what seems to be some sort of flat chalice. Purpose? No idea, the description didn't seem to reveal this information either. Anyway, it was nice to see something like this, especially as the window straight ahead of us is almost a direct copy of the window frame below. Aside from that, the tall angular shapes make this building as gothic as it's probably going to get.

Just a close up inspection of the window frame below, just the see the detail of the wood which will help for texturing. The light also seems to be reflected quite a bit, indicating that this was coated in some sort of varnish. (Probably on the museums side.) Just nice to see something like this up in person, and in this much detail.

Wooden window frame, could use this to base window patterns off. Everything in this blog thus far is within our era, for us to freely use. Angular pattern on what seems to be a mahogany window frame. Very old looking, would fit in perfectly in both a design as well as wood texture.

At the very least this could be used as a direct reference to create likely looking old London. :D

Priests clothing. At this stage we're not sure whether to integrate actual characters into our environment, but our initial idea consists of showing at least bits of clothing, and aside from that book that I looked at regarding the clothing, it was nice to see sculptures and actual remnants of clothing from that era. To be more specific, it could be described as drapery. Tons and tons of folds. Loose fabric, Celtic design +/- old.

Took this because everyone in that period was pretty much very religious, as well as the fact that the lighting on this particular photo comes from above which gives some pretty epic lighting. :D According to the description in the museum, this was actually displayed in some churches, however it's not something that's very common, and would probably not be relevant to us for our project.

Decorative objects on the wall - as the description below shows, this actually did exist, despite speculation of mythical influence. Besides the obvious fact of taking these for the way they look (heads attached to a block, attached to a wall) these particular decorations had light coming from above, which gives that dark, gothic like feel. I feel this is appropriate as the light coming from above can mimic our created 'sun', for our environment project.

Same as below. A close up of this image reveals that it is infact not a general human head, but it's actually deformed, which leads me to believed that they simply did not just get a chopped head and stick it on a pole. It's possible that the head was actually mutilated prior to being chopped off and put on a hole.

Theories confirmed! Infact, very rarely was there simply a chopped head on a pole without showing signs of bruising or anything else. Appearances of things like these slowly started to disappear throughout the 1400's though.

Apparently these sort of things were very common in terms of threats on posters, or just general heads on poles to show warnings as a sign of superiority. Poles on a head. Purpose? To warn people, usually done by authority to threaten people or make a mock of certain people for specific reasons. However fascinating, this most likely won't appear in our composition.

Tile pattern - This was also another decoration (wall decoration), Old, desaturated colour, on tiles, with a generic pattern, common in wallpaper actually. These aspects would contribute towards an overall 'gothic' atmosphere. Anyway, something that we could possibly use when considering the border patterns on walls.

Relate to description below - Decoration. Probably crowned the gable of a shrine, containing relics of a saint.

Just looking at the shapes, texture and structure of the object, as it's something we could take into decoration when it comes to placing decorations of our own, where need be.

Same as below.

Another close up of the same sandstone wall. Just to see the texture of it in a closer more detailed view. As I said previously, this texture is perfect for the texture of the house walls.

Brick wall texture - Walls existing at that point in time. This says nothing but OLD, FEEBLE, RUBBLE which looks like a solid hit would simply shatter this into pieces. Again, a lovely texture which would look nice on a brick wall in Olde London. Embosses clumps of sandstone

So, to gather some REAL PRE-EXISTING-PRESERVED, we took a trip to the british museum, for inspiration, as well as some real ideas / materials / concepts we could use as a part of our idea.



Interesting information documented at the british museum. Unfortunately, aside from what we found, there wasn't that much there! One of our scouts (Oly) is going to steal information (gather) from the LONDON museum :D


We spent pretty much most of the day at these two places, we collaborated quite a few ideas with the new information gathered. Most of which will be conveyed next update with hopefully some actual concepts /storyboard of our actual idea.


Below are two very brief video analysis. One = talking about an image of housing, shapes, feel, the way it looks etc. And the other, talking about how people act and would need to carry their own cutlery and so forth.