Costume design 01

Roughing out a hospital porter costume.

With the ecclesiastical leaning of the environment and the story's need for authority figures, I've developed this from the style of a monk's habit and tabard.

The colour has been taken directly from Wright's Taliesin palette.

Character feeds environment feeds character

In lots of little ways, as I'm working through the proxy set design, I'm getting ideas to feed back into the characters which will inhabit it.

Characters first, developed to represent authority, freedom, sympathy, religion, oppression, incarceration. All in terms of the protagonist's state of mind, trying to develop characters that would reflect elements of his story (history).

The environment has grown out of the characters and now that's echoing back to those characters.

It is still a psychiatric hospital but it's developing an almost church-like theme so... where does that go?

Environment proxy modelling

A few things are striking me as I'm building this proxy environment.

• I'm modelling to scale but the appearance of scale also has to fit the needs of the story (that's in terms of impression rather than levels of detail, physical restraints or other technical considerations).
• You can zone an environment with geometry, lighting and colour.
• Trying to make a claustrophobic environment is (necessarily?) restricting... Experimentation in focal length is needed... possibly another element to zoning?

On we go...

Ohhh.. and Boolean operations are still a complete pig!

Effects_01

I've been thinking about how one of my characters might perceive the world and how that could be put across to an audience.

The character's reality is not consensual, and I was wondering how to put across a transition or hint that we're shifting between two views.

As a start I've looked at using a chromatic aberration effect by splitting the RGB channels and transforming them.


This is designed to be an animated effect, warping in and out as we move from one area to another, possibly between shots or even to represent the character blinking..

Environment Concept Approach

Another approach to concept work. I've tried a floor plan and basic proxy model for my hospital/asylum set.

There are a few things that set me on this route.

• I was getting frustrated with interior environment design.
• I watched a talk by Capy Games' Dan Cox (GDC 2015) https://youtu.be/WWXsmnlmADc
• That lead me to Rengel's Shaping Interior Space (buy it used!! It's damn expensive otherwise) http://amzn.eu/0lDu4Gu

I was also reading Mamet's Writing In Restaurants. As with some other great writers, he was able to present a revelation as something I already knew (but didn't know I knew). http://amzn.eu/6JRwJkv

There is no use for realism other than being true to the story (and that's an incredibly loose paraphrasing...)

That leads you right down the rabbit hole.

Asylum Style-um

I'm investigating Mid Century Modern design with a style sheet of sorts. It's interesting to discover that Frank Lloyd Wright was of Welsh lineage. You can see an approximation of his Taliesin West colour palette (against 3 backgrounds) at the foot of the sheet.

Style Sheet - Mid Century Modern

Images combined from various sources

Frank Lloyd Wright - Taliesin Palette

http://www.steinerag.com/flw/Artifact%20Pages/Schumacher.htm

There are also some elements of the Roman & Williams designed Hotel Emma thrown in. They appear to have embraced the decaying, aged, weathered and worn elements of a the building to produce a stunning interior.

Roman & Williams - Hotel Emma, San Antonio (TX)

https://thespaces.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/3-Hotel-Emma-Cred-Scott-Martin1.jpg

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/f5/fc/5c/f5fc5c8d3e35d73bb7c04d03926067e1.jpg

Taking some of these elements forward, I need to finalise a scheme for colour and surface pattern, choose specific architectural elements and props, produce specific sheets for each purpose and then, maybe, block out the environment.

It's a plan... it might change...

Early Moodboard

This is an early moodboard incorporating:

• early sketches
• sculpt concepts
• character and environment references
• early storyboard ideas
• pattern and colour

Along with a working outline, the juxtaposed, layered and partially transparent images proved to be a good jumping-off point for further development.

A revised moodboard is overdue. I'm thinking that a number of iterations as ideas move on could work.

It's all about figuring out the process.