Polycount contest

[Stormy]

http://www.polycount.com/2013/04/04/flytovalve/

LFT - Jimonions, Livewire, Jangalomph, down?

Sathor? Major Banter?

[vcool]

interesting

[jimonions]

LFT - low faggot tolerance? first google result.

Not exactly sure what the rules and requirements are but I am definitely going to suspend my other projects to give this a go.

[Stormy]

Looking for team.

I can model but I'm no good at hammer, or composition at all really. Team up?

[Armageddon]

I'll team up.

[Jangalomph]

If you guys want me to do VFX in Source or UDK, im down for it. I'd prefer UDK, But i can handle anything. I'll team up!

[Stormy]

Well I'm thinking of a scene with a dude in a hoodie in a grey world listening to music, and the 'escape' is the escape from reality when he listens to music. I'm thinking of having him 'escaping' through the top of his head as a naked body with a set of headphones on. I think this would look good with a bunch of really colourful particles, where you would come in. Doing brainstorming and composition now, will post pics.

My brainstorm so far:

[jimonions]

Serious competition. Wont be winning but still worth the go.
The main part is getting the beauty shots down which requires specific shots angled and made specifically for them.

Scene 1: I was thinking like 2 guys helping each other down into a giant area littered with machinery from a fan duct in the ceiling with rope. The floor wet from water and all the other junk that comes with old places. To add some interest there could be like blue/green liquid like fuel dripping from crevices onto giant mutated shrooms/crystals/whatever. The guys are carrying a glowstick/lantern/fire torch.

Scene 2: same deal. Old machinery everywhere but instead of an open scene its more of an over the shoulder of their light illuminating an object in the upcoming darkness. These objects should be interesting meaning they should have the viewer captivated into thinking about their origin and purpose without giving it completely away. A big round grate in the floor filled with the blue liquid but there's also the tip of something revealed just under the surface.

If you don't like these ideas I can think of more quite easily. I might just end up doing them myself.

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[Stormy]

I certainly like the old machinery approach, and a large scene with a lot of mystery would invoke some emotion. Although I think crawling in to a cramped space kind of conveys the opposite of escape. Unless perhaps they are urban archeologists and this is their way of escaping the world they live in, but this would have to be communicated through the composition somehow. Could you push the message of 'escape' more? Maybe something in the blue liquid is going to escape? I also think your idea would be easier to sell as a story and as a game, I have a feeling that the more it looks like a playable game the better. My idea is not really a playable game type image.

As for the 'music guy' I did some scribbling for basic views (I'm terribad at composition) and a mood board for what I mean. The world around the character would be all grey and stark contrast. Exploding from his head is a mass of color and activity and a human figure in some sort of emancipated pose. The silhouette of the explosion restores color to the textures around it.



The background would be a grey city street and the explosion would be a psychedelic LSD thing (using Jangas particle skillz)



The idea is music helps him escape from his world.

Either way I'm going to start making a character model pronto, since it seems like we'll need one no matter what.

[Kosire]

Bit late to be joining the party gents. This contest started on Feb 28th and is neding on May 12th.
Back then you had 10 weeks + 2 days and well if you are joining now you only have a month. But don't let me stop you from joining, just saying you're competitors have a huge headstart!

Valve only just now revealed their prize which is a pretty cool prize.

[Major Banter]

A month is not a lot of time. However, two beauty and one idle gif is workable in that timeframe, assuming we immediately collaborate, identify what we're doing in what engine and designate tasks asap.

We'll talk and figure something out. I'll warn you now though that my time is extremely limited with finals coming up.

Edit; I'll be idling on steam tonight, shoot me a PM stormy/jim/whoever

[Stormy]

Been thinking, trying to get some composition down so we can start creating assets. At the moment it's Armageddon on mapping, Janga on particles and me on models.

Here's the most recent scribble I have (after pages of practice). You'll have to embellish a bit, obv.



Focal points are his face, which will be serene as he escapes to his world, and the headphones on the apparition. Hoping to have lots of colourful shit in there to push the contrast of the dream vs the grey world. Thinking of having the silhouette of the dream colouring the backdrop behind it. Janga suggested having the dream as a kind of rift into another world, a peaceful grassy field to escape to.

[Dr. Delta]

That is pretty sick.

[Stormy]

I tried to expand on that concept of having the apparition appearing in a rift, where another world was visible in his imagination. The problem with this approach was that it would be hard to accomplish in engine. It could be done, but not in the time frame we have. At the moment I am at work for another week, so I can't start making assets yet (although I get a few hours every night and have started the main character). I'm using this time to flesh out the concept as much as I can and to get a grip on the assets we'll need, so prepare for a diatribe of stream-of-consciousness typing.

Major Banter and I had a pow wow about the setting and came up with a good basis for the dissonance between the grey world and the main characters imagination. I want to push the idea that the grey world is an oppressive prison and the apparition is his beautiful escape. I want to have aggressive advertisements in the grey world - posters, signs etc. I think these should have pictures of the faceless drones (more on that later) on them so that they show how integrated into the system the drones are, and how much the main character doesn't relate to the grey world. I want the grey world to be dark and narcissistic and dangerous. Hard and sharp and something to be avoided. We don't have time for half the ideas I have to push that idea so I'll focus on getting the composition right and hopefully we'll get the message across.

Smurftyours had the idea of the main character being in a subway, surrounded by faceless drones. I think this really suits our needs and the theme. The subway is a good setting to show the mindlessness of the population of the grey world, rushing to live out their lives. The subway setting means we don't have to worry about a detailed skybox and heaps of clutter, just enough to sell the scene. As for the drones themselves, I want them to be particularly narcissistic. In order to push that idea we'll need to look at their body language and their positioning in the scene. They will have closed aggressive poses while the main character needs to be very open. He doesn't belong in their society and I want to push that. Initially I wanted the main character to be depressed and angry and therefore part of the grey world, but that's a bit too dark for me so I think having him coloured and separate from their world gives more of a hopeful message. I want the drones to contrast with the main character as much as possible so I want to look at the angles defined by either them or the main character, and make sure they contrast well (angular vs smooth, direction of motion etc.). I also want to really push the robotic idea and have subtle hints that the drones are robots. An exposed mechanism in their joints or a plate line on their heads. Not sure how much I'll have time to model.

So working on that idea I fleshed out the sketch a bit.



I would like to have the headphone cords connected to each character, to further unify them as one person. Now that we have the faceless drones I'm not going to have time to model the naked version of the main character, so I'll just saturate the hell out of his clothes and use the same model. I am trying to maintain the rule of thirds and leading lines as much as I possibly can. I want the focus points to be both of their faces, and the explosion of colour coming out of their heads, so I placed both of their heads at the intersection of the dividing lines. I had to push the main character down in the frame in order to get his head on an intersection, hence he is sitting on the floor. I think this will increase the dissonance between him and the grey world of standing drones though, so it's a good thing, hopefully. I am also surrounding their heads with a circle of particles and keeping the head itself clear, hopefully he shape contrast will create more focus. (I am new to composition so please chime in if there's something I can do to increase the focal points).

After thinking about the layout of the level and the work involved though, I realised that we're not going to have the time to do it. We're super late. So I decided to simplify the layout into a single space.

This concept has the main character in the same subway station, but no rift. The subway station is still grey, and the apparition colourful, and I think we'll put in ultra-saturated lights so that some of the particles appear to be bringing colour to the world - not sure how well this will work. The particles will explode from his head and travel through the level as a stream towards an exit of some kind - stairwell, vent, window, whatever. In the particles will be the apparition of himself although I'm not sure what yet, or how many. If the stream of particles to the exit is long then we could put multiple apparitions of the same model in there but I think that would create too many focus points, and confuse the image. In my sketch I drew the apparition a couple of times to see what we could have it posed as, but I want to keep it simple and easy reading.



He is standing in this picture because I shifted the camera angle but I think it works better when he is sitting, allowing the world to pass him by. I also prefer the simpler mind explosion in the first one. I think it reads better with a larger focus on the apparition, and it's easier to have the headphones linked. SO I think we'll be doing the setting of the second sketch with the poses of the first.

We decided on UDK because the particles are going to be the most important part of the image and Jangalomph is pro in UDK particles, whereas source's particle system is shithouse. Smurftyours is modelling environment art and he is the most knowledgeable UDK bro so he's the UDK man.

I think today I'll try to cut as many features as possible, to make it more plausible to get it done in time, and start to concept some assets when I am on breaks. Damn I wish I could just start modelling, a month of full time modelling would be PLENTY of time.

[SmileTime]

I really enjoy your thoughts and concepts on this. That first sketch is superior composition wise to the second.

They will have closed aggressive poses while the main character needs to be very open. He doesn't belong in their society and I want to push that. Initially I wanted the main character to be depressed and angry and therefore part of the grey world, but that's a bit too dark for me so I think having him coloured and separate from their world gives more of a hopeful message. I want the drones to contrast with the main character as much as possible so I want to look at the angles defined by either them or the main character, and make sure they contrast well (angular vs smooth, direction of motion etc.).

I find this particularly appealing and touching. A few thoughts:

If the "physical" character in the "oppresive world" is too distinct in terms of color and dress from the "drones" then the symbolism of "escape" into the spiritual form could become muddled. I don't know exactly what your planning but consider keeping some of the "angry/depressed" look but perhaps in a more "anxious/depressed" look (disheveled instead of threatening). If the "physical" form looks too "free" then the distinction between the physical and spiritual versions becomes lost and the "escape" appears to be unnecessary as his "rebellion" is already apparent without the spirit version.

You could use a very low-poly version for the naked version, just make it glow very brightly and you won't have to model it in detail because silhouetting and FX will make it look right.

If you need a location for the spirit to escape to, having a section of the tunnel wall/ceiling broken open (surrealistically) and leading to another plane of existence is more interesting than a stairwell.

Composition wise use the particle stream to guide the eye past the crowd of onlookers, perhaps placing the character at far left and the spiritual form at far right. Keeping the character in the center doesn't give you alot of room to work with and, to be honest, "centering the subject" really isn't ever aesthetically pleasing, it's just aesthetically easy. Spread out the focal points and then use the lines of the walls and the particle stream to move the viewers eye along them.