When We're Gone -'Art Of'- Major Submission.

Contents.

Introduction pg 3 Development pg 4 Research Influences brain storming ideas Initial Proposals Character profiles fliming Established town

pre-production pg 11 Initial Environment Designs Set concepts Shop fronts branding, designs & Orthographs Propaganda Influences & designs designing the drones script set plans 2d storyboards 3D Pre-Vis

Production pg 54 Salvenger Drones Pipeline: - Modelling Drone 1 - Modelling Drone 2: Arms - texturing the Drones - Rigging Main Street Set Dressings: - foliage pack Main Street Shop Fronts: - Modelling - Texturing / Main street buildings: Render Stills

Introduction: When We’re Gone, is an environmental and character design project focused on storytelling through world building. The urban environments are set into the future where flora and fauna have taken over the city and reclaimed the land.

The premise of the projects consists of a society where rebel activists’ revolt against the use of nuclear power because of its effects on the earth, they try and ‘save’ the earth by shutting down the nuclear power plants; only to make the situation worse as the power plants aren’t shut down correctly and nuclear reactions occur causing the power plants to go into meltdown (this would be a mass attack on power plants across the globe where one by one they are shut down incorrectly). Meanwhile; underneath all the chaos, there are a group of scientists that are striving to build a conservation ship in preparation to leave earth with plant and organism samples to cultivate in space. Only to never leave earth’s atmosphere and crash land back to earth.

The story would be set years into the future where the earth has regained its vegetation from the nuclear explosions with noticeable lack of human colonization in large cities.

Those who remain resort to using drones to surveil and scout the cities nearby for potential resources and to monitor the radioactivity within the area.

From being inspired by the aftermath of Chernobyl, old abandoned towns and the way nature reclaims a once urban area, to the destruction happening in the war-torn middle east. I have tried to use these events to influence my environments and their design to help tell the story through the environment. In addition to this I wanted to bring light to how the aftermath of events can have lasting impacts on the environment and can sometimes make living conditions inhospitable for years to come, but yet life always finds a way to evolve in even in the most hostile environments.

Research & Influences.

To begin with I looked into the type of environments I wanted to make. Here I found myself leaning towards more of a nature-based environment with hints of the future mixing with the remines of the past.

This led me to looking at the concept of creating a dystopian world that resonated with real world events and took inspiration from real places. Mostly looking at places like Chernobyl, Aleppo and the Eden Project for structural inspiration.

Further visual Influences.

brain storming ideas To start with I looked at coming up with some ‘what if?’ scenarios to help build a foundation platform to work from.

Initial Proposals P r o p o s a l 1 - N a t u r e B a s e d . ➢ - Plants, Aquatic Animals, Green Houses – Focus on Summery Lighting/Glowing Plant ascents, texturing and modelling.

P r o p o s a l 2 – I n t e r i o r D e s i g n . ➢ - House interiors and possible exteriors – Focus on indoor lighting, texturing and modelling.

P r o p o s a l 3 – D y s t o p i a n S o c i e t i e s . ➢ - Creating Indoor and outdoor exteriors using ideas of cyber/steampunk elements to create a collapsing society

with these proposals i looked to combine an aspect of each concept to allow me to create a world full of history. Thus giving the scenario stated at the beginning.

Character profiles Anti-Nuclear Regime Terror Group (The ANR) Name:

The Anti-Nuclear Regime (The ANR for short).

Mission Objective:

To stop the use of nuclear power across the world and to encourage more environmentally friendly means of cultivating energy.

Salvenger UNIt Drones.

Name: Salve 0094/0510.

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How The ANR came to be: • • • • •

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Started out as small protests against nuclear power outside power plants.

Protest escalated to rioting and minor attacks on the nuclear plant’s outer buildings.

More people join the cause, the ANR grow stronger and bolder in their resistance to nuclear energy.

The ANR escalate their protesting tactics by producing propaganda and using scaremongering to induct more people to their regime through fear.

Finally, they attack the power plants and try shutting them down across the globe, but with each plant being shut down the reactors aren’t shut down correctly. Meaning that the reactor cooling systems are stopped, causing the reactors to overheat and combust/explode.

After each plant meltdown the surrounding areas become uninhabitable, leaving only small pocket of society left in safe area after each attack.

Why?

A small group of people grew tired of the chemical toxicity that is produced by not only by nuclear power plants, but also other factories that produce just as much pollution into the environment. They wanted to put a stop to this and use more natural means to source energy/power.

Scavenger + Salvager = Salvengers – Salves for short – pronounce: Sal/ven/gers – A person who searches/collects discarded items and tries to preserve (something) from potential loss.

Mission Objective:

• Search and document area findings to report back to Salve Control for processing.

Appearance: • • • • • • •

Square shaped drone with a round back.

Has a screen / lens to view its surroundings.

Is powered by a hydro-electric tank, same ones being used in science labs but just compressed.

Has an antenna to receive and give out transmissions.

One has arms and with wire sticking out and the other has no arm to signify and older model.

Vents along the side of the drone and a turbine attached to the back to push the drone forward.

Drone will also have a number plate on the back to help identify the drones make and model

FILMING Within filming I intended to have the camera be a mix between static shots and a combination of two drones Points of View. So, the pair would travel through the decrepit city scoping it out to see what remains and to try and find out what happed there. I plan for the key focus to be solely on moving through the damaged city and into the science labs where the scientists are planning their escape showing a generator room, plans for the conservation ship and hub pods for growing plants. Ultimately leading to the camera coming across a break in the labs window to see that the conservation ship never made it off earth, leaving the why up to viewers interpretation as to what happened/went wrong.

I came to this decision from trying to think of how I could make the shorts seem more interactive. To do this I looked at drone footage which I could use for aerial shots; in addition to this I also looked at some game play footage to see/get an idea of how the human perspective could possibly work and how they may move through the scene to then translate back to the drone’s perspective. Through switching up the dynamic between a static camera as a drone I hope to bring in this idea of viewer interaction to the piece and make them want to see more of the world the pair go about encountering the environment.

Game Play Footage Links:

1# https://youtu.be/ZoV9G8yZUDg 2# https://youtu.be/Jg-v15nY3YU 3# https://youtu.be/dAjuzqltpgI

Drone Footage Links:

1# https://youtu.be/UeZtlFeEcNg 2# https://youtu.be/rkb3y6K3waU

Established town To help establish the world I am creating, I first looked at conceptualizing the town in which the animated short takes place. This came with inventing a town name and the type of town in which the story takes place.

Here I decided to go with a small to medium size town filled with small local businesses that would have catered to the locals. In addition to this I also thought of the time setting/feel the town would have; for this I decided to go with a retro 1970-80’s feel where design played a huge feature in shop front design that then married up with the typography and other graphics seen on shops in that era.

The town name I found was a bit harder to create and come up with. To help aid the town naming process I used a random name generator for places in the world (some real, some made up and other places that came from either folklore and fantasy worlds) with this I went through the process to see what names the generator came up with. From there I then picked out names I liked the sound of and made them into a list to see what I was working with. I then picked out the names I thought could work within my small town, this included reworking some the names to see the effect/get a feel for the name; either as a town name or and street name.

In the end, I chose the go with the adapted version of the name ‘Hartset’ (Harret Set) for the town name; where I could then apply this some of my town shops and street names.

Town Naming process.

Hartset Harret Set. Harret Set Laboratories and Conservation Center.

Harret Set Tailors and Co.

pre-production

Initial Environment Designs

mind map of waht i intend to make.

initial main street and generator room Sketches

initial Lab Sketches

initial Lab deck Sketches

Generator plans, blue prints and conservation ship Designs

Main Street.

Set concepts

Lab deck desk.

Lab deck desk light change.

Generator room Hallway.

Lab deck shattered window.

Shop fronts branding, designs & Orthographs from looking at the initial sketches, I began finalizing the look and feel of the some of the buildings I intend to have in my main street scenes; as well as including 2 miscellaneous buildings that I can then further modify to create other buildings to help fill out the street and add a bit more variety.

For the buildings I was going for a run down weathered feel; with the idea of foliage and natural plant life taking over and reclaiming the town and it’s surroundings. With the addition of dirt and moss I am also hoping to convey the age of the town, as well as incorporating small bits of graffiti to help imply its rough history with the ANR Regime.

Shop fronts designs

Orthographs

Propaganda Influences & designs Propaganda influwnces:

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• Soviet Space Propaganda.

• Propaganda Against the Atomic Bomb.

Science Propaganda and Conservation Posters.

pro clean energy

anti-nuclear power

designing the drones: initial sketches.

With the drone I wanted it to be small and compact with a way to move about; either with turbines or wings and to have some sort of camera/ screen to view it’s surroundings, as well as have some sort of extendable arm to be able to move/nudge things. To begin with I began by creating random shapes and then using those to form the base shape of the drone.

From there I picked the three I liked and then begun to further develop those designs, combining different aspects/ features from all three of the initial designs.

Then I repeated this process to create a further six ideas. With this I found the top row of drone designs to hold the small and compact look I was after, but found there was room for further develop where the extend able arm will be placed.

designing the drones: Further development.

I took on the drone I felt had the most potential to be a bit more interactive within the scenes and to help draw interest to certain objects/devices. on the left I created a further 3 designs with some slight modifications and looked at adding in the arm and focusing on the way the arm will look/ move with the drone

Since I intend to have 2 drones within my short, I looked at having a drone with an arm and one without to help imply that one drone is an older model and one is a newer updated version. Here I also looked at compressing the drone to be a bit more compact and appear less clunky, to do this I shortened the front face of the drone and rearranged the front components/add-ons.

In addition to this I also considered how the back of the drone could be used to identify the drone model as well at working out/adapting what the drones are going to be called.

drones 1 and 2 Outcome

drones 1 and 2 Orthographs

script

set plans

2D storyboards.

3D Pre-vis: initial sets generator room anvd tower staircase.

main Street & lab building

lab deck desk.

lab deck

3D Pre-vis: final Mock sets

3D Pre-vis: Screen shots

Production

modelling Drone 1 & 2

modelling drone 1

modelling drone 2: Arms

modelling drone 2: Arms - outcome

texturing the drones

Here i used a mixture of substance painter (for the key materials used for the base of the drone), photoshop (for the emission maps and eyes) and after effects to texture the drones water tank bubbles and eye blink animation.

drone 1 & 2 rigging/Skinning. rigged the antenna to add some secondary movement when animating.

Antenna rig used for both drone 1 (left) and drone 2 (right). below shows the joints in the rig, how it was skinned and the outcome of skinning the joints to the antenna mesh.

main street set dressings: foliage pack

COLEUS

Cordyline

Ferns

flowers pt 1

flowers pt 2.

hosta’s

Leaves

main street shop fronts: modelling

modelling ripped shop awning

modelling Flower Cart & Stand

modelling window basket and Wall light

Modelling Rubbel pile assets

Modelling Broken home

Modelling flower shop

Modelling Fresh market grocers

Modelling MIsc building 2

Modelling MIsc building

Modelling Sweet treats cafe

Modelling tailors shop

v

Modelling Truck

main street shop fronts: texturing.

flower shop

sweet treats cafe

tailors shop

final Shop front renders

Substance decals

Truck renders Substance decal

Truck interior

Flower Cart Renders

Substance decals

when we ’

’ re gone...