Dreams of Halab
polycounter lvl 12
So I've had this idea for a while and finally jumpstarted it a couple weeks ago and working away at it after work hours. I really want this to look as good as it possibly can, so constructive criticism is more than welcome.
This project is mainly inspired by a recurring nightmare that a 5 year old girl living in Syria experiences almost every night of living in Aleppo. For those interested in her story, click here
Lighting + Composition moodboard
And this is my blockout so far in UE4. I'd like to add a couple more things to it and try a few different angles before moving on to making assets.
This project is mainly inspired by a recurring nightmare that a 5 year old girl living in Syria experiences almost every night of living in Aleppo. For those interested in her story, click here
Lighting + Composition moodboard
And this is my blockout so far in UE4. I'd like to add a couple more things to it and try a few different angles before moving on to making assets.
Replies
A lot of the buildings jut out our have some variation on the second floor, this varies with each building as well making it feel like a bunch of different structures, while what you have here looks more like a hallway. I would try to add some more interesting shapes to the main structure of the buildings.
Gotcha. Added a bit of a leveling to my blockout since. I'll be breaking up the silhouette a bit more by exaggerating the bent metal and laying out pieces of cloth.
Yes I remember exactly what you're talking about. They'll pretty much be modular pieces and tileable textures blended into each other. I'll be planning it out a little better for myself from now on. It's definitely something I'd love to do, I know it would make my life a lot easier.
I haven't had too much time to work with this these last few days. Hopefully this week will be better. But I pretty much moved a lot of things around, added some wiring and almost have the composition I want there.
These images have become my most go-to references. I've highlighted a few elements that I will be adding.
Another angle I'm considering
The references are very powerful and so is your early composition and lighting.
Will be following this thread closely
Keep it up!
Matt, thanks for your feedback. I completely understand what you mean about the focal point + lack of clarity. I think I may have diluted the part of the story I was going for a bit too much in my first post. I think I assumed people wouldn't read/pay attention to that part as much right now. But the vision is there, so bear with me and this upcoming wall of text. Hopefully it gives everyone a better idea of what I'm trying to go for.
If you've started watching from the mark I made on the link on the first post - What really struck a cord with me and got me started on this entire project and this story in particular was due to the little girl clearly labeling her nightmare as a "dream". And so here, I'm trying to re-create her nightmare state rather than her day to day state. A nightmare with 5 snipers surrounding her (which in this project is symbolized with the bullet holes on the corrugated metal overhead in the foreground) and shooting her in multiple places. And she smiles as she describes this "dream", as if there was never a line differentiating a dream from a nightmare.
So with that said, I'm hopefully going to have the little girl made by a friend to place in the alleyway. Teddy bear in hand and maybe clutching onto a backpack. I'll also be looking to try and exaggerate a couple of aspects as I go like lighting + silhouettes, as well as making the entire environment seem larger than it is (especially in comparison to her as a character) and making it feel a little claustrophobic by tightening alleyway with clutter, playing with the FOV and just having a general "no-go zone". This aspect will hopefully stand on its own - character or not.
The old city and markets in Aleppo are the centre of Syria's battlefield, they're probably the most dangerous areas, bombarded constantly and most notably has several snipers lurking around the area. And I wanted to place her there in the midst of it all, as if she was lead astray and fallen into an even more unfortunate circumstance within the war.
So in short, the composition will hopefully keep developing as I move forward and the assets will start to make sense as they are established and placed.
Thanks Charles, I'm excited and scared to try and push this thing an extra step.