Adaptation B - Beachcomber's Cottage

This is obviously very late in the day and I'm aware I have a lot of catching up to do with this project but these show the progression of drawings for the Beachcomber's cottage for my adaptation of the book 'Baggywrinkle'. The first pencil drawings were too generic but I was trying to get a sense of what was needed in the building. The story says that the small cottage is on the edge of the beach with a hammock and rocking chair on the balcony. The cottage is made from the leaves of a palm tree and filled with treasures from the ocean.

These next few drawings were inspired by palm trees, masks of the Ivory Coast (where the story is set) and patterns and textures from the seventies, which is when the book was written.

These are a few ideas I had for how to show the sea and the trees on the beach. I wanted to incorporate the seventies theme and these patterns seemed to work quite well.

A quick sketch of the interior and notes on how the cottage is described in the book.

FV Environment art

Playing around with environment ideas. Still got lots to do, but I think this is the sort of style I'm going for. Because my characters will  be quite rounded and soft, I'd like to keep the environment more angular (I've used the lasso tool a lot!). The environments aren't as important as the characters in my story so I'm hoping by differentiating the shapes it will make them stand out more.

 

I started with similar looking generic houses but then thought of turning my habitats into the parts of the body that the flu virus would naturally enter, such as the nostrils and mouth.

 

I like the idea of keeping the environments more stylized so it isn't immediately obvious that it is a nose, hence trying out the different colours.

I see the nostrils as being the doors that the virus will knock at and then enter!

From Script to Screen - Final Crit Presentation

Crit Presentation

WIM - Building sketches

 As per Jordan's instructions I'm putting these sketches up! I always forget to put sketchbook work on my blog and I did these a while ago. These are the buildings I'm hoping to model in Maya.

I see this as the main building in my city - some sort of Town Hall.

  

This I saw as a school or university. A very airy and light building with the option of opening up the sides to create an indoor/outdoor space. The interior would allow for rooms to be created or opened up as necessary with the use of canopies and screens.

 

I really, really want to model this in Maya, but know that it will be super-tricky. Jordan's given me some pointers so I think I'll get the other buildings out the way and then tackle this one at the end. I could create it on a matte painting, but I think that would be cheating a bit and I really want to have a go at modelling it.

 

 

 These are a couple of pages just getting my head around how the walkway will work. I started off with having straight poles which could be raised or lowered to change the height and shape of the canopied walkway, but after sketching some ideas I thought it'd look better as curved supports. Then these can be bent more or less to create height. Might look at insects and caterpillars to see how their legs work in the same way to raise and lower their bodies.

 

So when it came to Maya I was struggling with how to create the building shapes. I tried starting with cubes and cylinders, creating curves and deleting faces. After speaking to Jordan it turns out I can create the buildings with the exact same effect I used in the beginning when doing my concept art in Photoshop, using planes and then warping and skewing them to create shapes. The work above is what Jordan did, so I will try and recreate it myself now. This is the way I believe Issey Miyake would have worked had he been creating his own city. The animation tools will come in handy to add the bends I need, so lots of practicing making bendy shapes for me. I'm hoping the pleating effect can be replicated in this way too.