It turns out that actually doing the research I needed on the noir style took a lot longer that I thought it would. However, I've got a lot of the basic ideas down now. That means the next two weeks can be used to concept to the best of my ability.
Yesterday, I got together all my key images. These are what I'll be using to decide on my composition and lighting in my final level.
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I've learnt so much this week about composition, lighting techniques and the whole noir aesthetic.
Now that I have the shots down, I need to figure out the environment. I narrowed down the original few ideas I had after putting together some moodboards, and I've settled on a hotel room/apartment murder scene.
I created some quick layout plans with some ideas about where the light sources would be.
I created a few white boxes but decided to settle on layout 3, although the white box I created was a little too big. I'd like to pull it in a little to make sure that I can focus on quality rather than quantity.
I took the white box into Unreal 4 and played around with some lighting set ups to see if I could get the shadows to cast properly. I also wanted some good screenshots to paint over to get an idea of what the final environment would look like.
I also created a quick blueprint for flickering lights, just to make sure that its something I could do fairly simply. I'll be able to get them to trigger fairly easily.
So lets do a review of the week.
- Research - Kiss Me Deadly and Seven
- Research - moodboards
- Research - noir and neo-noir visual characteristics
- Moodboards - composition and environment
- White boxes - alleyway and multiple apartment layouts
- Unreal 4 - Lighting tests and blueprints work
The style guide is in the works, much of it will come from the key image mood board above. The anatomy mesh is also nearly done and I've got some basic thumbnails done of shots I'd like. Paintovers shall commence shortly.
I am a little behind, but I'm pretty certain I can catch up next week. It's going well.
- Hannah
