Brainstorm, Initial Ideas.

Initially, for this project, I wanted to continue exploring what I've been doing during my Dissertation. But after doing that and thinking about it, this isn't what I really enjoy doing. And I started this course because it was important to me to do what I enjoy spending my time on. I have also noticed that I do a lot better if it's something I enjoy because I simply spend a lot more time on it, I put a lot of thought into the detail and I feel that's what makes it awesome. ^^ 

So from here on I have been thinking about making another game level for this project. 

But since I have a lot of time om this I decided to make this one a big one : D

I started brainstorming on thing I could do

I considered things like big factories, with a lot of machinery and weird objects it would be an interested thing to do. 

I thought of an abandoned mall, through this I could show a variety of skills because I would have to model a lot of different things in different styles. Eg. Fabrics in clothes shops, toy shops food shops etc. 

Another idea was to do a scene out of a nightmare. In a huge toy store, would make it full of creepy toys like clowns etc. I imagined it having a distorted vision and uneven walls and things.

I thought of doing an old fashioned little town. 

I thought of making like a big building or a castle or something, on top of a snowy mountain. 

Another idea was to do a big mansion, in which you'd explore different rooms etc. 

But the last idea I've had outweighed them all.

I thought about doing a lake town, that way I could use pretty much all of the skills I have and have a chance to gain a lot of new ones.

It won't be an easy to do because there are a lot of things I have to pin down very early in the process. What time it's in, how advanced or simple the people are. This will inform what tools and technology they'll use. What clothing they wear. I will have to figure out what people will live there,will it just be fishermen and will they just live off the fishing or will they be fairly close to the land and hunt too for example.

I feel like this will be a very exciting thing to do so I quickly crossed out all the other ideas and started thinking about making my laketown. 

Initial Ideas

The ancient ruins theme is really up my street.
So I started thinking a little outside of the box.
I thought of some sort of teleport that could spit you out near an Earth like planet, where you'd see no people just ruins. I wanted to make it creepy, and really mysterious. I didn't want to leave any clues to how the civilization of this planet disappeared.
Then I thought of Mayans, Egyptians, Romans, Celts, Persians, Vikings, Aztecs and Chinese.
With all those I could do ruined cities with really clear clues to what civilization it is.

I thought of the pyramids in unusual places like embedded in some rock, inside a huge mountain... some silly things like these.
Then came an idea of the Atlantis.

I really strongly believe that there are other forms of intelligent life out there. And I do believe that they have visited us in the past, this shows through all sorts of carvings and paintings all over the world, in Egyptian pyramids etc.
I mean even the pyramids -__- there is... no way that we built them. And also, I think there's a reason why such similar structures were built all over the world, it can't be that different civilizations that had no communication with each other built the same things.
But enough of my crazy.
I watched an interesting documentary about the Atlantis, and how it's aliens... I can't really remember how it went. But I wanted to do like a huge, floating island. It'd be the ruins of Atlantis on that island. I got really excited about this but it quickly went away as I thought of more ideas, ideas which in my mind would work out a little better.

In the end I decided to do an environment based around the Mayan civilization.
I looked at tons of theories and stories of Mayans.
In Tres Zapotes, La Venta and San Lorenzo.
I read that in the above cities began their sort of, cult or religion. But what I found interesting is that they presented a gate to different worlds in a form of huge open mouth coming out of the earth etc. I found it really cool and it gave me an awesome idea.
I wanted to place my Mayan civilization on a different planet!
So here is where the research into other planets began.

Initial Ideas

Themes:

Good vs Evil

Triumph Over Diversity

Death As A Part Of Life

Man Vs Nature

As I said before as soon as I read those themes I started coming up with ideas for each of them, but the Good Vs Evil and Man Vs Nature stood out to me the most.

For Good Vs Evil I was thinking about making it quite funny and do some awesome ninja fight between two things. But I've decided that I need to stop trying to make everything funny and try something else. 

With Man Vs Nature, I immediately thought of doing a video about natural disasters eating the city away. With this I could go two ways, have the video show the event, tsunami, hurricane or an earthquake for example... or just the aftermath of it. 

The other idea I had was to do a sort of, timelapse of a once busy street, being claimed back by the nature. It'd end up looking similar to things like Angor Wat temple, or any other abandoned city, basically a ruin with tree branches breaking through etc. 

I'm not entirely sure which option I'll go for I'll have to think about it and consider how much I am able to do at this point, since it's my first time doing the special effects. I'll look for useful tutorials, planning on experimenting a lot, and pick up some tricks and techniques and hopefully the end product will look how I want it to look : D