Style and Concept

Karen has a very particular visual style that she wants to achieve with this film, and at the moment I'm not sure whether it's going to be easy or difficult. I think in terms of modelling it will be a challenge because everything needs to stay consistent with the design otherwise the audience will see that certain things look different from each other. However the texturing should be a lot easier and faster on my end as the objects and characters will require a lot less detail because of the stylised look we're now aiming for. Our main reference for the style is the game 'Fairytale Fights' by Playlogic Game Factory.

From the image above you can see that the style is very simplistic with bold flat colours, whereas the environment in the background has an almost pastel/watercolour look to it which I feel I will easily be able to replicate due to my background with fine art which involved the use of a lot of mixed materials for painting. Another thing to take into consideration is the type of shapes and how they are used in the environments and on the characters, for example, a lot of proportions are exaggerated in size such as the eyes and head, whereas the trees in the environment will be one block shape rather than have lots of different branches and hundreds of leaves on them.

As the environment concept artist for the group I've been thinking about the possible shape for the tree which is a lot harder than I initially thought, this is because the tree has to look like it is strong enough to hold the weight of the treehouse but also retain the visual style that we are trying to achieve, to do this I have had to experiment with the shape of the treehouse as well as the tree to make sure that they can fit together properly without looking odd.

The sketches above were for us as a group to help identify the style of tree that we wanted. We found out a lot about what twe wanted from these sketches, firstly we realised that the treehouse couldn't be too high off the ground, so the tree had to be a medium height but thick and strong enough to support the treehouse; secondly I realised that the shape of the tree that is shown is too highly influenced by the shapes of the trees from Fairytale Fights and in reality wouldn't be able to hold a treehouse due to the incorrect branch structuring. After some quick research I found that treehouses are usually built in mature  grown trees which are sturdy and strong, also they must have a branch structure where the branches grow outwards to the side from the centre of the tree so that wooden planks can be layed down on them for the foundation.