Developing the Environment

When it came to develop where our machinima would be set, we produced concept art. I first started with the western idea, as the brief we were given included an option as to how the narrative in the machinima played our. I liked the idea of two characters having a trade-off in a scenario reminiscent to that of Sergio Leone's Western film trilogy, and features a potential character to help portray my idea of this.

Lastly, I produced a space environment as we were narrowing our decision to something more sure and definite. I was still keen on my western idea at the time - space age, futuristic stuff as strange as it sounds has never interested me much in terms of games. But I figured if I'm going to work on developing this machinima I could have my influence on it's direction.

This is the second piece of concept art I created and although it does look similar to the underwater city seen in Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace, my main inspiration / influence for this particular work was in Genndy Tartakovsky's Samurai Jack and the city of Aquiatus (if memory serves me correctly). I thought an underwater environment was quite original and leaves plenty of room for variation; it could be fantasy as depicted here with the whale with four fins and bio-luminescent lights, or could be reality accurate, and I expand my referance imagery with deep sea-level photos and images.

I also had art for a volcanic setting but by the time I had produced these three we had made a decision on a futuristic, space-age environment.

I think using the space environment was a good idea. There was little limitation in what we could or couldn't do and we could portray it however we liked. At the same time it also imposed some rules in what we could do and so set us on a path of design that wouldn't have our ideas deviate so drastically as to be irrelevant.

Eventually, we decided on a space level and I began to develop a character for it, whilst leaving the design of the spaceship's interior to other members of the group.