Team – Chloe Hughes, Megan Sutton, Travis Morrow and Marc McAuley
To start the project off Megan and I went over some ideas for the teams 3D environment. As we were discussing we noticed that we had a grim/horror feel to the environments that we wanted to create no matter what setting it was in it always had a twist to it to involve gory aspects examples Arcades, asylums, saloons, Murder Shack and fish bowl.
I think Megan and I wanted the environment to represent a common interest we both share which is true crime. Megan introduced me to this podcast called My Favourite Murder last year and I haven’t stopped listening to it since.
After this I decided that I wanted to look into what are murder shack would in tale. I started with a brainstorm of ideas of what items could be included within a murder shack which can be seen below-
My ideas came from movies, tv shows and documentaries that I had seen in the past e.g. Criminal Minds, Bones, CSI, Midnight Meat Train, Texas Chainsaw, Silence of the Lambs, My Friend Dahmer, The Toy Box and countless documentaries I have watched on serial killers and true crime. To read more check out my Inspiration page!
Then I began creating mood boards the reason for this was I wanted to try to convince the team to take a risk and try something different and I knew I had to show them what was running through my head. Below are the mood boards I created-
(All images used can be found on Google Images)
Within the mood boards I gave examples of what I thought the outside of the building could represent through abandoned buildings, cabins in the woods and creepy caravans. I also thought about what type of person are character/our story-teller is and this inspired the boards on chaotic and meticulous human beings. (These were all things I started to think about when creating the boards). I also made mood boards on the items that could be within the property.
Property concept sketch-
What I did next was devised a floor plan as to where these items could be placed as I believed this character to be meticulous and would have everything in its proper place, I also included some simple sketches as to where this items would be to get a visual look into the madness.
Floor plan-
Sketches-
The story I had written for this character was that he was aged between 20-30, white male, with average height and weight, with brown hair & brown eyes. This man is meticulous about his cabin/shack has a place for everything and everything’s in its place. This can be seen in the drawings that I did above I have carefully placed each item to be in correspondence with the items next to them that’s why I have sectioned parts of the room off to mean different things and contain different items.
At our next meeting we decided to go over my list of key items that will be placed within the shack these items can be seen below-
We then decided to distribute the work up evenly this way we can work faster, the items I was given was the trunk and the light fixtures. I volunteered to do both of these as they spiked my interest. As we are basing the shack within the 70’s this was the aesthetic that we went for.
Below is the mood boards that I made to represent each of the items that I was given based on the 70’s style-
This is the sketches that I did I wanted to give them a more 70’s feel to them by adding the borders and also by using colours that were from a 70’s inspired colour palette. Below are my sketches-
We decided to make clean versions of the items and then distort them to make them look old and worn also to give them a rustic look since it’s based within a cabin in the woods.
Below is my sketch-
Finalised Pro List-
Reflection-
Looking back over this section of the project I feel like I really started the year well I’m happy with the work that I produced for the ideation section. I think I explored my idea to the best of my ability with the research that I had produced with my true crime knowledge. I think there’s still a lot to learn on how to produce quality concepts but I’m still happy with the outcome as I think they fit the theme well of that 70’s era I wanted to give them a retro look with a 70’s colour palette. Overall I think the ideation section of the project went all members contributed well and all ideas were explored.
Shannon Murray - University of Ulster Animation 