Idea

-


When I was younger, I used to read a lot of legends and tales about fantasy creatures. I was particularly interested in Slavic mythology, ritual and beliefs. Then I started to play The Witcher, game based on a book written by Polish writer Andrzej Sapkowski. This story was full of  Slavic tales and legends, so I was inspired to create something related to this. When I was a kid, I went across a very famous tale about an old, grumpy woman with supernatural powers called Baba Yaga. Origin of this story is not exactly clear, probably it came all the way from Russia. However, it seems like a lot of different cultures have a creature similar to Baba Yaga in their mythology. For example, Germans have Frau Holle, Italians Befana, and English Black Annis. But there is something special and creative in Slavic stories, so Baba Yaga doesn't have an ordinary house in a forest, she lives in a house on chicken legs, which she can move wherever she wants to. 

I remind myself of this story when I saw a children book, and inside there was an illustration of a chicken leg house. So I decided that it would be great to attempt to recreate this building in 3D as a part of my final major project at University. In my head, I pictured it as an animated piece located in a swamp environment. 

In the beginning, my idea for FMP was to create a playable environment with this building as a centrepiece. In this case, I would have to model different kinds of vegetation, related props, also I would have to set up everything in the game engine. However, after a lecturer's feedback, I realized that I'm not able to do it in a given amount of time. So my plan was changed, and a final idea is to make a fully animated model of a chicken leg house as well as an occupant: Baba Yaga. Both models going to be animated; a building going to have a walk cycle, a Witch will be flying around on a broomstick. 

With idea created, it is time to focus on concepts. In that in mind, I'm going to generate some interesting concept pieces, which will help me to develop this project further. 

FMP Proposal
This is a proposal describing my project.
Project Details:
Diorama based on legend of Baba Yaga. There will be 2 animated characters:
1.      House on a chicken leg- I divided the building into 3 main components:
 -house (the main building, made from the dark wooden logs, with the roof made from the dry straws)
-tower (part of a house which sits on the top of the main building, using same materials a s house)
-legs (organic element which allows the house to walk around) 
-ornament (windows, columns, dry herbs and old clothes hanging under the ceiling, lights, eyes hanging from the bottom of the house observing the area)
2.Baba Yaga- creepy old lady, flaying around the house on the broom.
-skinny
-messy grey hair
-deer horns stick out of her head
-eyes as bright as almost looking blind
-big earrings and lots of bracelets
-messy cloths
-long fingernails
Rationale:
By the end of this project, I would like to have a high-quality portfolio piece- each element will be presented in a video and screenshots. Since I am really interested in Slavic legends I wanted to make my version of an old story of Baba Yaga. I wish to gain more knowledge about the character creation workflow as well as making smooth animations.

I undertake this project because it will help me to improve my skills in:
-creating concept art
-organic modelling
-creating realistic materials
-rigging and skinning
-animating

Deliverables:
I wish to produce 2 fully rigged and animated characters, ready to use in a game. Each part of the project I would like to present professionally in my portfolio.


Denmark, T. (n.d.). Baba Yaga's Hut Color Cover Art. [image] Available at: https://www.thomasdenmark.com/product-page/baba-yaga-s-hut 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

House Concept

-
Image
Within the strong idea in my mind, I started to gather a lot of references. I focused on a house first, so I was searching for the concepts already made by other artists, to give myself a starting point. However, I was also looking for photos of existing buildings and objects. At that time, I was considering the style that I am going for, and I decided to keep the textures quite realistic, but at the same time a bit stylised with the proportions and overall look. I created 2 mood boards: one with pieces of art made by other artists and the second one with existing objects I found. The main building is inspired by the old, wooden log cabins, plenty of them can be found in the small villages in Poland. I would like to add more personality to it by including details like hanging dry herbs, pieces of cloth, skulls, and torches. I want this place to fill somewhat neglected and controlled at the same time. I begin the concept art creation by study the overall silhouette of the bui...
Read more

Roof

-
Image
I spend ages looking for the way to create a thatched roof. I knew that I want to use planes witch an alpha texture to create a few segments which I can assembly and merge together to get a roof. This is the same method which I used to create hair for my characters. I know that the final result looks quite realistic and this is the easy way to achieve a roof which does not look flat, because I can bend each plane individually and give it some depth. It also helps to save some texture space, because I can unwrap 3 smaller planes instead of having one which has to be very big on the Uv map. The problem for me wasn't the method I will use, but the way to create the hay texture itself. I found some tutorials saying to use a Substance Designer, but I still don't feel too confident using the nodes in Substance. In this case, I started to look for a photo texture of the hay. The problem was that the photo texture was looking too sharp comparing to the other textures. It didn't wor...
Read more

Props animation

-
Image
It took me a week to get the main movement of the house ready. There was a lot of tweaking and playing with curves to make it look right and smooth. I still see an issue when the animation loops. There is a bit of a jump when it reaches the end however, I will smooth it out in the engine. Now I will have a look into animating the props. All of the hanging objects have to swing while the house moves. There was an idea to make the sway animation in the engine with a rope physics, however I would have to keep all of the props separate and I would also have to create separate rigs for each object. In this case, while I had my rig already created, I choose to make the animation in 3Ds Max manually. I started with windows. Since the house is bent forward, I want to keep the front window shutters open and sway from one side to another. At the back window, shutters are closed because the house doesn't bend to the back. However, whenever the leg touches the ground, each shutter will jump ...
Read more