Beginning

For my thesis, I will be doing an environment art piece. It will be set approximately 7:00 am on a cloudy day in a high school. The portion of the high school belongs to the band. It will feature the stage, theater, and backstage area, along with the band room itself. With a hallway connecting the areas.

This project will heavily draw on my own experience in a high school band. The feelings I experienced during this time of my life are feelings that I would like to recreate. However, I am aware that focusing only on nostalgia will not allow this to be accessible to everyone. As such I will focus on the emotions that everyone has felt at some point in their lives. Anxiety, nervousness, chaos, excitement.

I will use the project to showcase my environment skills by driving in my knowledge of lighting and texturing, not only the modeling itself. All things I have found in my research to be desired of an environment artist.

For the art style, I will be drawing inspiration from the style of Life is Strange. I have read a blog from one of the concept artists who had worked on the game, describing their goal of the game appearing like 3D concept art. I feel the sort of 3D painting/picture will help bring across the idea that this is a memory/nostalgic without having to rely on everyone having the same experience with band as I have. The anxiety, chaos, and such will be achieved based on lighting and object placement.

The theater and stage will be set in a darker area, with a spotlight focusing on the area where the bad itself will be. It is mystery. The audience is close, almost one with the stage. What will the band bring when they sit down to play?

The band room itself shows the chaos that goes on off stage. Sheet music around everywhere, some stands fallen over. The room is cluttered, barely big enough to fit all the instruments, even without the people who play them.

While I still have a fair amount of research I want to do, I would also like to insure that I have my art style fully fleshed out. I will test some of the methods I research on one or two simple models and import them into engine (most likely unreal) for a better understanding of how they will look. This way I can fully solidify what I want my project to look like.