Update :D

Before I start logging my life story, details of my experience thus far as a leader is as follows:

Hard work. At this stage, I am the one organizing everything, collaborating information, doing the research and the planning. Not to say everyone else is slacking because they aren't, but I need to be more managerial and less fatherly, I'm far too lenient, and as a result of this, at this stage, I am the one doing quite a huge chunk of the work.

Era – Prior to the Black Death / renaissance. London

Point of View (POV) of the character. As sprung from the initial idea of a character running through a collapsing building (initial concept.) Basic idea below:

This is just a basic VERY quick ( as you can tell) drawing of the idea just to visually illustrate what my interpretation of Gerome's basic description was.

It seems, after much discussion, that we are going to have a rat (cause of the black death) roam this particular street in London. Rats point of view. This rat is going to roaming, dodging obstacles such as people throwing their waste of out windows, shrieks from nearby people, or even feet trying to stamp on it, as well as waste on that actual floor itself. That’s the basic concept. More finalisation + development comes later on.

Couple images of the sort of theme / look we're basing on from a STARTING point:
Just another shot of a building, showing the angular shapes, textures, and general equilibrium of the house itself (balance.)
More houses. Scan taken from a book on the "Medieval ages", reflects generally the look of the buildings during that era. Built of cheapish, degrading material, worn down. Very angular and irregular centres of gravity. It seems there is a lot of protruding going on, in terms of ledges and floors.
The above image is a direct reference to the sort of lighting we're after. Late sunset, to create an eerie yet slightly curious atmosphere. After all, a sunset is pretty, but pre-black-death London, is not. This will be a great contrast coupled with the wetness and the rain, all contributing to one heck of a representation.

Colour - Self explanatory. Why are the colours we're using there in the first place?

What do we want to convey? Sickness, dirtiness, an overall dark feel.

How can this be achieved? In terms of colour, this can be achieved by the use of cold tones, blues to greys. Saturation all plays hand in hand with this environment. The use of less saturated tones will give a slightly eerie feel.

What relevance do they have to the scene.

What effects do they have on the environment, as well as the mood and atmosphere of the environment?

How will colour help us to convey specific mood changes / atmospheric effects as well as how it could be used to indirectly link symbolism.

At this point this needs to be further developed and looked at, through the use of a storyboard / animatic which is our next step; after research of course.

To elaborate: This is set prior to the Black Death Era in Britain. People are poor, hygiene is ridiculously bad, clothes are pretty much rags and drapery, unwashed. Rich people did not really reside in London at this period in time. These aspects are quite easy to gather from general research into the period of the black death (1350.)

Are we doing this prior to? Or during? Or as it started?


The Black Death can appear in 3 forms, each one more deadly than the previous form.

The bubonic plague...


...was the most common form of Black Death. The symptoms were enlarged and inflamed lymph nodes, pretty much in the most awkward places: the crotch, armpit, and the neck. The term 'bubonic' refers to the ‘characteristic bubo or enlarged lymphatic gland’. People infected with the disease suffered from headaches, nausea, aching joints, fever of 101-105 degrees (Fahrenheit) vomiting and a general feeling of illness. Symptoms generally took around 4 days average to show themselves.

The pneumonic plague...



...was the second most commonly seen form of the Black Death. ‘The pneumonic and the septicaemia plague were probably seen less then the bubonic plague because the victims often died before they could reach other places’

The death rate for the pneumonic plague was 90-95% (if treated today the mortality rate would be 5-10%). This plague infected the lungs. Symptoms included saliva mixed with blood and mucus. When the disease progresses, the ‘sputum’ (all the crap I just previously explained) became water-like and bright red.

The septicemic plague was the most rare form of all. The mortality was close to 100% (even today there is no treatment.) To put it simply, this disease ‘keels mofos’.

It has yet to be finalised to whether we're actually going to have symptoms of the black plague shown, whether its on characters, or just enabling us the gather the atmosphere and feel of the environment of that specific era.

Source: http://www.insecta-inspecta.com/fleas/bdeath/Black.html; http://www.zkea.com/archives/archive02005.html

‘The plague reached London in autumn 1348. According to the contemporary Robert of Avesbury. London, as the country's largest city, had all the concomitant problems of overcrowding and poor sanitation. The Thames was a polluted mess and cesspits within the city were a constant source of contamination.

Attempts to alleviate the sanitation problem were not helped by the Black Death itself. In 1349, the King remonstrated with the town council about the state of the streets. The council replied that it could do nothing on account of the fact that all of its street cleaners had died of the plague.' <- lolz

“A special warning has to be made about early epidemics of the "plague", for example in Greek or Roman history or in the Bible - these are usually not well enough documented to make any definite statement about the nature of the disease; the usage of the name stems from the early modern time, when the plague was the only disease known to cause massively killing epidemics." Many scientists believe that there was an outbreak of bubonic plague in the 6th century, starting in Africa and moving to Constantinople and the rest of the Byzantine Empire. Most scientists believe that the Black Death in the 14th century was an outbreak of bubonic plague. However, other theories have now been advanced, suggesting that the Black Death may have been an outbreak of some other disease, possibly a hemorrhagic fever similar to Ebola, or anthrax. The Great Plague of 1665 in London is also generally believed to have been an outbreak of bubonic plague. After a localised outbreak in Provence in southern France in 1720-1721, Europe suffered no more such attacks of plague, though the disease remained virulent in other regions, killing upwards of ten million in India in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries according to some estimates. The last rat-borne epidemic in the United States occurred in Los Angeles, California in 1924-1925.”

So that’s that sorted. Questions to be answered next group meeting. – Monday 15th November.

Colour - Self explanatory. Why are the colours we're using there in the first place? After discussion the overall feel of this is going to be moody. So darkish, cold to a degree, messy etc.

This can obviously be conveyed by using dark colour colours or less saturated colours to show age / deterioration.

What relevance do they have to the scene? What effects do they have on the environment, as well as the mood and atmosphere of the environment?

How will colour help us to convey specific mood changes / atmospheric effects as well as how it could be used to indirectly link symbolism. How awesome is the final project going to be? We will be sort of replicating a real place so it should have a feel of the place we're going to replicate.

How will that actually affect our final outcome? How well is this going to be pulled off? What is the final finished detail of the project going to be?

What is appropriate animation? Simply put, necessary animation. Why animate anything that the camera is not going to see? Why make a bird do a back flip followed by a running jump if the original intention was for it to just fly away? Random? Yes, but there are contexts for these things.

It's all appropriate if it fits with what is required. What is the purpose of light? Both literally and how it affects an environment / mood of a character / environment.

How can we use light to correctly convey various viewpoints of the audience? How can we use light to portray a sense of isolation / suspense / power / beauty / lolage?

John Snow Facts Dr John Snow (1813-1858, yes, out of our period of time but read on) was a famous physician of his time. He was also recognised as a leader in the development of anaesthesia! Well in Britain obviously. It is also said as well that he is one of the founders of epidemiology. “Epidemiology is the study of patterns of health and illness and associated factors at the population level” – Source: www.google.com/define:

Due to his studies in toxicology, John Snow developed an interest in anaesthesia and cholera, which led to a theory on the spread of the cholera poison in water. It seems he was correct, and because of this, a pub was named after him. This all happened around 1838 – quite a few hundred years after the black death incident, however, the city streets were still relatively bad, imagine how bad they must’ve been prior to the plague?

We can use this as an incentive to correctly design our street based on factual evidence. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=64sDijuQIvUC&printsec=frontcover&dq=clothing+in+london+1350&source=bl&ots=Eo2JLusTtX&sig=qz4ii8R1cdXwXdZtwCGDpL3jYu4&hl=en&ei=5uzaTOagJ4yEhQfPkqHQAg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&sqi=2&ved=0CCIQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=clothing%20in%20london%201350&f=false <- a handy little website which pretty much shows 80% of a book they’re selling. No idea why. Anyway, from there it was pretty easy to get a glimpse / insight to clothing of that era, and to put it simply, one word: Fable.

From this, gained quite a bit of inspiration surprisingly about the overall feel of the place we were designing, more so than the actual clothing themselves. Frail, scruffy looking drapery, noble-like dressing, without that 'rich feel'.
^I don't have to tell you what she/ that thing is. But yeah, part of the initial design (above) was that we'd have a camera navigating through a street in London, prior to or just as the black plague starts, showing life in that era, in London.

Drapery, cloaks, rags, is pretty much what it is. People also carried their own cutlery so we could actually show cutlery on trouser legs and so forth. Gathered from research. Depending on what we actually show in our sequence though.

Due to the fact that fable is pretty much a very good insight for us (same sort of era)

“A good concept should be a basic idea, imbued with a great atmosphere.” – The making of Fable 2.

It's this quote which has thus lead me to the way I'm working with everything as my role as the team leader. A simple idea, a character running through a crumbling building (scrapped) which later turned into a street in London (Geromes idea) with the POV of a character to take the focus away from the character and more so the detail and environment (my idea).

This character was later developed into a rat, as it fit with the theme, as well as the ability to tell a story WHILST delivering the environmental aspects..



Everyone should watch these two videos as they’re quite informative + touch on aspects we also need to touch on.

This guy talks about how fable and the aspects of the game which are taken into consideration, in terms of lighting, realism and the likes. More so about the software that they decided to use and talking about how static objects were modelled in Z-Brush, a tool which allows you to sculpt in 3D.

Mentioned on the video, Z-brush is best used for touching up, but is also a great tool to speedily model static objects, something which I'm heavily considering. I'm extremely confident in modelling in 3D, which links to my 2D ability in the sense of detail in three-dimension.

WE SHOULD TOTALLY MAKE A DOCUMENTARY VIDEO TOO! TICKS ASSESSMENT CRITERIA 1-4 INSTANTLY!

Music – We also need to think about music, and sounds. How do we want the atmosphere to be? Bear in mind, we have to compose this ourselves (not a problem, me and gerome can do it) but at some point after during the production Id like to take you guys to mehhuuse and make the music. You all have fable, you all know what sort of sounds would be good, so fill me in :D



<- the strings in this particular one are quick, staccato - in common old cartoons are used to illustrate movement of a small animal, or light steps from big animals / characters, OR to illustrate a chase scene. Basically anything fast paced too. :P

What does this mean?

This will mimic the footsteps OR the footsteps of the character we are using will go in tune with the music. This allows integration of sound with action. I already have an idea for how this is going to sound. Good work guys!