'Up Above Down Below' Final Piece

Not so happy with this one, there's a lot more I wanted to do with it but didn't leave enough rendering time. The lighting could have been better, there could have been more in the scene, the speed needed to be regulated at the start and I didn't get to put in my big finish, which was to change the camera view at the end towards the earth to see it be blown up by the giant space invader.

Modelling: International Space Station

This is a piece I modelled for the visualisation project "Up Above Down Below", it's a slight adaptation of the International Space Station, the adaptation being I havn't put in the scaffolding around as it looked better without, and the textures are different.

It is available to download from TurboSquid HERE

Progress

So it's been a week and a bit of neglection for my blog, sorry this tends to happen around a month before hand in dates, anyway just a quick sum up of where I am with my projects, what they're going to be and why:

Up Above Down Below

Back to the beginning of modelling, Simon told me to change my idea slightly, unfortuantly that 'slight' change is where I had done all my modelling, so many wasted hours there.

The Idea - 'Space Elevator', the cart shoots into space, exploring planets and moons, but it also passes by thiins you might want to see in space but never experience, i.e. a black hole, comet close up, an exploding planet and a giant space invader.

Of Bots And Bananas

Modelling the robot, in a few days modelling the scenery. The robot is nothing spectacular as it doesn't have to be, for the time being I'm going to concentrate on the animation. The scenery consists of two mountains, with a rope bridge attacthing them.

The Idea - 'The Bridge', a robot falls from the sky and lands on a mountain side, he wants to get across to the other side so crosses a bridge, he sees a plank missing and steps over it only to slip on a banana peel, he falls continuesly hitting off of the mountain. When he lands it's back to the start of the animation, so it can loop.

Card Game

Designed second prototype, with all cards designed and a clear rule set. Still space for changes to be made if there needs to be any, currently play testing the game and have been for two weeks nearly.

The Idea - Each player has to save their victims and scores points for doing so, it's long winded to explain properly so feel free to find the rule set on here, it's tagged under 'Card Game'.

'Up Above Down Below' Concept

There's going to be 3 separate environments, an EARTH environment, SPACE and WATER.

In a nutshell here's what I have planned to happen:

The scene starts in the earth environment with a man boarding the rollercoaster, the camera then switches perspective form 3rd point to 1st allowing the audience to sit in the seat of the man, essentially to be him. The rollercoaster then kicks into gear going through both rural and urban areas, showing off the extremes of both, as it becomes more rural the track begins to travel up a mountain-side, and because it's at the depth of the rural environment it looses power, the rollercoaster is then launched up the track at a tremendous speed only to reveal that the track ends.

The cart is launched into space (second environment) and travels around various stars, planets and extra terrestrial lifeforms. As well as the journey on the track there will be cuts of environments and maybe the man, to show him astounded.

The cart will eventually lose power from being in space and begin to fall to a new planet that is coated in water. The cart falls onto a track on the water planet and begins to go round on it, it passes through corals and fish filled areas, but as the journey goes on the terrains and creatures became less familiar and more alien like, again with this there are cuts off the track to the environment and the astounded look on the mans face. After passing through this area the rollercoaster will stop in an alien station.

Elements and Theme:

• The rollercoaster will be a rocket cart with huge thrusters.
• When the cart looses power the thrusters boom with fire and launch the cart into space.
• There is no dominant theme, I want the clip to show variety in environments.
  
• The track is important, it will start off stable but as it travels through the environments there will be loops, corkscrews, jumps - just generally getting more exciting as it goes on.
  
• Im going to try and put in dominant features throughout, so in the urban areas there will be huge buildings, cracked roads, tramps etc. in the rural trees, mountains, rivers and wildlife. In space shooting stars, comets, floating chuncks of rock, black holes and on the water planet there will be corals, deep and shallow water, sunken ships, caves, flurries of fish and sea creatures etc.