Production

So I begun to draw up some basic concepts. I have based it on the photos of the houses and the pictures from rochester. The house look very top-heavy and very light. They are half timber with white render in the walls. I am only putting a lot of detail on one side of the house, as the other sides will not be seen as the houses are close together and cramped up.

I have also begun to start modelling a basic house. It is only a basic block shape at the moment but I need to add the timbers going down the house. I also need to add windows and a door.

I will put the pictures up of concepts as soon as my scanner decides to work again.

Slow progress so far.

Concepts and storyboards

I have drawn up some concepts for my house. After a group discussion we have decided to all model a house to begin with and then duplicate them to make a street. They will be rearranged in different orders so that they are not obviously the same houses.

We have also agreed on a storyline for the animation. This was an idea from Gerome which we all adjusted and added input to create the final storyline. Dom then created the storyboard and it can be seen on the group blogs.

For my concepts, I have used the pictures I took from the museum and the pictures that Lily and Sarah took in Rochester. I have then drawn a house that would fit in around that time. I started with little doodles of components like the door knob and windows. This then developed into a full house. The pictures are all shown below.


Below are some doodles of different parts of the scene from the era we are looking at. I have begun to look at the windows and doors and also had a rough concept for a lamp in the street, depending on the time of day.

I have started to think about the housing and the cramped spaces but, yet again, this is only rough sketches. 

I have started to think a bit more about the sort of house I wish to model. This image is more of a shop window so will probably not model something like this but I am going in the right direction.

I have begun to design a house that I am going to model. It looks a little complicated but I think I will be able to pull it off. It is exactly the sort of houses we were all thinking about modelling and this is a good starting point. It still needs some development.

I have developed the house more. I have made it simpler and realised the the sides and back do not need to look too complicated. It is in the style we are after as it is half timber and will have white walls. 

These have been developed again and have a colour style so you can see how the colours are going to contrast. The house on the left looks a little too simple so I am looking to model the house on the right.

With my concepts and designs, I can begin to model. 

Trips

Yesterday I went to London Zoo to look at different environments. I didn't just look at environments related to my theme but I looked at lots of different environments, how things were adjusted to suit each animal and to see things interact with the environment. I also went to the Museum of London to find out about the history of London. Unfortunately I was not allowed to take any photos using flash and it was very dark so very  few photographs were visible. However, I did pick up a lot of information about London around the time of the plague and the conditions in medieval London. I also found out about the clothes they would wear and how they would do everyday things like washing and and going to market.

These are the images I took of different types of environment. These show the different types of environment and how the animals are interacting in their environment:

This is the penguin pool. The bowl is filled with water so they can swim around but they have added rocks and minimal amounts of bushes and trees. 

This is a bird enclosure. It shows how they have kept the environment same as the surroundings, with trees and bushes, but have put a large net over it to keep the birds in.

This was in the reptile house. The environment is very hot and dry. There are some logs and trees to climb up onto. This is to suit the animal.

This is an environment I found in the reptile house. There was no animals in this enclosure but the textures are similar to that which we will use in our environment as we are using timber. Around that era, the floor was mainly wooden floor boards so this image gives good reference.

This environment has been specifically designed for the frog which lives here. It is very hot and damp and bright which replicates its natural environment.

This environment shows how the environment is used. This gorilla enclosure uses the ropes and trees trunks to use as exercise.

This water environment shows how the objects have to adapt to the water. The rocks make good hiding places for the animals that live within the environment.

The next set of pictures are of different textures that will be relevant for the project brief. They are textures of wood and different buildings. They also show water on different materials because our scene is going to have water or sewage in making the streets wet. This shows how the water reflects off the different materials.

This image shows the way water soaks into the walls. The water mainly soaks into the edges leaving the middle quite dry which is why it forms the water pattern it does. In very wet weather,the middle of the bricks tend to dry first as the water does not soak in as far as there are not as many cracks and crevices for the water to go into.

This was a good picture to show texture and also patterns. It would be a good pattern to use on walls or decoration on the buildings.

This image is to show the texture of wood close up. It is going to be good reference in our scene if we decide that it is going to be a wet and rainy day because we can look at how the water stays in the wood.

This rock shows a good texture that can be used on the cobbled street. It is the colour that is similar to the colour we will use and the different tones on the rock give a good reference.

This image shows how the water sits on top of the wood and how this effects the texture underneath. In our scene, there will be some materials that water will not soak into so this is good reference for that. 

This is good reference for the wood we will use on the buildings and shows a knot which will make our model and texture more realistic.

This picture is to show the water on the railing. It shows how water puddles and pools on the material on the railing. This is going to be useful if we want to add water on the roofs or on the floor.

This is a wall texture will could offer a different texture rather than a half timber house texture.

This is another texture which shows the rain on the stone, rock and brick. This will come in handy when texturing the roof. This will give me an idea of what the reflections should look like coming off the roof.

This is a new wooden wall they created at the zoo. This is what the timber will look like on the house however it will look much older than this as this timber looks very new.

This is a good wall reference image. The image below is a close up of the wall and shows the texture of it. This is going to help when doing our cobbled street and it looks old and will help us when trying to make it look realistic.

This is a close up of the wall to give a better idea of what the texture will look like.

This is a cobbled bit of paving which is the effect will be attempting in our scene. The colour is not quite what we are using as we are looking for a greyer colour. However, the texture is exactly what we are aiming for.

This shows the effect of water on the wood. It shows how the timber will look when it is slightly wet. If we decide to have the scene slightly wet or rainy.

This is another example of the texture which will be used between the timber. It shows how it has been worn and how it would look over time.

This shows how the render material ages. It shows how the weather effects the environment.

The pictures above and below are good examples of how the buildings will look. They are good examples of aged buildings and the render material which will be used between the timber. It also shows how the material looks wet.

This texture could be used inside the buildings as a wall decoration or on the chairs, for example. 

The following textures will be useful in the environment we are going to create.

This wood will be good to use as the timber texture.

This brick will be good to use on the floor as the cobbled floor.

This is a good wall texture and would be a good texture to use as the wall parts between the timber.

 Some of these textures will be useful on the half timber houses that we need to build in our environment. The effect of the rain on some of the rocks will also be useful when we build the cobbled street.

When I went to the Museum of London, I managed to take some photos to give us a good idea of what life was like back then. It gave me an idea of the houses and the clothing that they wore.

This was a paved path outside of the museum but gave a good reference of the how the roads and paths would look in the era we are looking at. The drains would definitely not have been around then so they are to be ignored.

Below shows a good reference of the pumps that people would have used back then to get water. I learnt that these would often get infected with bacteria and could easily spread illness. They were the one of the only sources of water.

The picture below shows the type of bucket people would have used in there houses for a variety of things. The most common uses were to hold water for washing or for mopping.

Below shows a half timber house. This is the sort of houses that we are looking to model. These types of houses were very common around the era and were seen in and out of London.

 Below are items of clothing that were taken from the era. These would be worn at more special occasions and were not really worn by the poorer folk.

The image below shows a shop window form around that era. They would sell all different things but would mainly be found down the main roads rather than the back streets.

This, below, is a cart which would be found around the markets. Carts were also used to shovel sewage out of the gutters but they looked very similar to these but lower to the ground and looked more like wheelbarrows.

 The images below shows a typical house. They were very cramped and top heavy. The higher floors were always larger than the lower ones so they looked as though they were going to topple over. They were also timber framed with large wooden doors. They also had low ceilings.

 This shows the type of panelling people would have in their houses. The richer people tended to have this with intricate patterns and crests. The poorer would have much plainer panelling, if any.

This has helped me with my research and understanding London in that era. It will help me model my house and texture it correctly. There is a lot of detail but I think it will be worth doing.

Research

So the research has begun!

Primarily, I have been looking at websites and images of old London. Because it has been around the time of the plague, I have been researching about conditions and lifestyle around then. The main websites I have looked at are:


http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/H/history/i-m/london2.html
(a website about the history of London run by channel 4)


http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/English/Learning/Learningonline/features/viking/viking_4.htm
(a website about medieval london from the museum of London)


This gave me a great starting point. It also helped me with making our scene historically correct.

The channel 4 website I found extremely useful. I discovered that London was a very tightly packed city with a lot of houses in a short amount of space. This was what caused the bad conditions.

The large amounts of people caused dirt and cramped areas. There are gutters on each side of the street where the dirt and grime would collect, not just from the street but the grime from the houses ended up there too. Such as dirty bath water and sewage. People did not care about hygiene then either so there was a large amount of body odour only adding to the filth. They would also wear the same clothes for massive amounts of time and sleep in them too. They would sometimes sleep with several people which would cause heat and sweat leading to more stench.

The authorise employed a team of cleaners to keep the city free of filth but there was too much filth to keep in control of. They would carry large carts and have spades to shovel up the sewage from the gutters in the streets.

The sanitation was a massive issue because there were open sewers everywhere. The rivers became so dirty that they were almost as bad as the sewers. This was because the sewers would run into the river so that large amounts of faeces and sewage and waste would end up going straight not the river.

They relied on wells to get their water which always had a risk of contamination. This made many people sick and because of the cramped conditions, sickness spread easily. When the Black Death hit London, it spread very fast and people would die within a matter of days because of the poor conditions.

I found out some more information on the museum of london website.

Most people in London traders, peasants, beggars thieves or herders which would herd animals throughout the streets. 

Most of the schools were run by churches and religion was a strong influence.

There was not a lot of medical knowledge so little illnesses that effect us today, such as the common cold, would have been life threatening back then. The healthcare was also expensive so the doctors mainly cared for the rich which meant there was a lot of death.

When my group and I met to discuss the idea we had decided on having gates that were really gothic and old. We also decided that our scene would follow a rat and that the rat would start in the sewer and crawl out from the drain. We then had the idea of people throwing rubbish and dirty water out of windows which would add grime and dirt to our scene.

By doing research, I discovered that gates were not found in a cramped London street that was filled with poverty. Gates were used to protect the large manor houses on the outskirts of the town where people were much richer. This was because gates were used as protection and in an old London street full of poor people, there was nothing worth protecting.

I also discovered that the rat climbing out of a drain would not be historically correct because there were no sewers until much later. All the sewage would be poured into the street into gutters running down each road. There was no underground system.

This did mean we needed to rethink our idea slightly but it was not too much of a hassle.

My next port of call is to visit some places. There are a few museums and attractions to visit such as the Museum of London and Dickens World. These will both give me a good idea into what houses and the conditions of the town in that era.

As I have looked into London more and more, I have discovered that Sherlock Holmes was filmed in Chatham Dockyard and some surrounding areas. I can visit these places quite easily and plan to get some good photographs which will help my research.