Thursday 1 September 2011

Yu/Kemi's House

I discovered a great way to plan out the environments, didn't' know why I didn't think about doing this before but drawing the environment from a top down view is incredibly useful to get a quick sense of space as well as experimenting with camera angles.  Doing it this way is also a quick and easy reference for perspectives.  (I did Yu's house first, then the train designs, then loads of ideas for Kemi's house).  Mike, here are the posts for the house plans.  Sorry if it doesn't really make sense to everyone - Mike and I have talked it out to the bone and we've even sorted out how the electricity grids will work especially in Yu's house XD

Yu's house:


- A lot of empty spaces in the middle such as the living room and bedroom (matches his mental state)
- Very clean and organised
- A lot of books
- Has a lot of Kemi's crap in there which sticks out like a sore thumb (think Nodame's stuff in Chiaki's room for those who has watched Nodame XD).
- Mike and I have decided that Yu has a thing for potted plants; particularly bonzais and Japanese peace-lilies XD. An idea that we had was that one of the things Yu can do whilst he waits for Kemi to come over was to cook dinner, read a book, watch tv, check email ... and water his plants.
- Uses minimalistic but semi expensive furniture
- I WANT YU'S HOUSE ;(.

Kemi's house (still WIP but the general idea's there):

Kemi's house is still under construction but there are certain elements written below that I thought would be good to mirror her mind state such as being chaotic, lots of magazines, plushies, books, CDs, DVDs and post-it notes everywhere.  Generally a lot of junk but cosy.


The idea behind this one is to have a turntable tv which is the centre of Kemi's life.  She can turn it to watch it in the living area, the bed, her little dressing table and her desk.  Oh yeh and the kitchen too I guess.  I had an idea that at one point when Yu visits her house, maybe every time he comes out from a room, the tv would be turned around to always face him...



Design 2, no turntable tv but the flow of the house is a lot better with a bigger desk.


Design 3 I tweaked the living room and made the place more fitting for 2 people.  Again not sure which design to go for depending on concept art BUT we should get the assets done for day1-2 first! Can't wait to get the ball rolling now.  What's everyone up to now?


12 comments:

  1. amazing........!!!

    as for what im up to, still doing the mental hospital pic haha >w< sorry, been doing about 3 pics at once so i hope thatll be done soon to post!

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  2. Yesss!! That would be amazing!! I hope we get to the mental hospital part in the demo >w< . I've talked through the story with Mike so it's loads clearer and definitely a lot more concrete. The only thing is, is that the buildup to the mental hospital is a bit long winded but necessary. I'll think about it a bit more :3

    Looking forward to your amazing artz when you're done :DD

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  3. ahhhh thats okay, well ive started it anyway now so i might as well finish it XD

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  4. Yo! There is huge amount of detail in this. Great ideas! Which one are you drawn to the most for kemi, so I can flesh out some detailed sketches to be tweaked for 3d?
    Personally I like the turntable Idea. Is the train work to go first anyway yah?
    Cookies!

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  5. Hooray! Mongoose is in the house!

    There are two ideas centered around the turntable tv - I'm not sure, I am drawn to both designs and I can write the script centring around it. Guess we'll leave it for the time being and yes, train bits first!!

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  6. In da house! ;) Ftw!

    No problem to that, I'll focus on the train shizzle!

    Cheers!

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  7. Well right now I am doing nothing related to the project or in real life so if you want to put me on task of some idea or a series of ideas I would love that as I am presently not really fulfilling Think tank or script functions. So if you want me to look over or add to a certain area or even just autonomously look and add to subjects I could do that.

    Also good idea using the building plan layout for concept art, just one question is the game set in a on rail format where you have to do things in strict order or are you setting it out as each day as a separate chapter of a story with a central “hub” where you can go of do story events and visit places in different orders? Because I was thinking about how is this going to evolve with more places added on, the apartments, the asylum and others you will have to have story specific places eg the train and the more used hub places would be more permanent as you would need some kind of travel user interface. So a map, list, a GPS thing. Just wondering if you have thought about it.

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  8. Glad you asked that Tim. Yes I have thought about it, I thought it would be cool that depending on which area you explore first, the player would have a better sense of 'control' at least. So far I've thought that there would be at least two 'areas' that the player would need to 'solve' and go through before the third area (fixed to always be the last area to be done).

    But that idea is really dependent on the programming which I don't think will be too hard to do. At the moment I am focusing on getting all the train stuff done before I focus on the areas outside of the train station.

    Mainly Day5 when stuff kicks off and you find out that Kemi is missing is the least that I aim to get done. I love the idea of using a map/GPS function with the phone which would show train/bus stop routes - that way we can be minimalistic and lazy to not draw such a detailed map XD

    At this moment I am writing a refined plot and time line between Yu and Kemi. The recent Team Wasabi meetup proved highly fruitful and there was a lot of refining and brainstorming of the current plot. I can't wait to finish writing it properly and posting it up here :DDD

    PS TIM: I found someone on dA who's actually into the same things as you - mainly Economics and science fiction. You guys should get talking! Here's his dA and why: http://wodvamp.deviantart.com/journal/43862443/ Thanks for posting and keeping things going :)

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  9. Indeed you could split the map into a underground and above ground maps accessible though a tab system like on a browser and even have certain bus routes only accessible from certain underground stations. I guess that would help in a full scale game as underground stations could be the hubs. Indeed a low detail map would be great as it would fit into your idea that everything Yu owns reflects his inner mind like his house with the empty area in the middle and the train with the posh minimalistic style/utilitarian, it would also cut down on the work needed allowing people to focus on other areas. Also the minimalistic style is very popular, cut down on the fuzz focus on the use.
    Good luck and I will look into this person.

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  10. I really like that idea of how we could build the map system a little bit more to add that level of detail. Unfortunately to do something like that in the time we have left...hmm.

    Thanks for the comment Tim!

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  11. No problem, although you are right we don’t have the time so we should focus on the core product and not the periphery ideas. We don’t want to get stuck in development hell as we do not the luxury of time.

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  12. Indeed! But there is always time to develop it for the real version ;D

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