Overdue Post! The Set!

I wanted something that looked student like, nothing overly glamorous. The idea of a studio flat appealed, having the front room and kitchen together in one room seemed appropriate, that way the action can take place all in one set that is easily manageable. I also wanted to keep it simple and as uncluttered as possible as to not distract the viewer from what is happening in the main action. Therefore, I decided to keep furniture a bare minimum. Here are some quick plan drawings I drew out, keeping in mind camera angles, how the action would unfold if the room was laid out as in each plan, where the furniture should go and how the character would move about.

After some thinking, I decided that this would be the best layout. I like the layout for this plan because as I was thinking through the animation in my mind, using this layout, it flowed nicely and worked for the camera angles.

From this, I made a Hudson set to decide on the scale and plan out how things would appear in 3D. These are some still renders from 3Ds Max of the key camera shots that I would be using, judging from my animatic.

Over the Christmas Holidays, I concentrated on getting the set done to the point where I can start animating, so getting the furniture in, textures, lighting and camera angles all sorted and tested.
This is a screen shot of the set in 3Ds Max:

I searched Turbosquid for some furniture to save some time on modeling them myself; however, I changed the textures on them so that they would blend together on my set. These are some still renders from 3Ds Max of camera angles which I will be using for my film.

All that is needed now is to accessorise the room, for instance, fill the cabinet with books, trophies, DVDs, CDs, etc, as well as putting some posters on the walls, maybe have some photo frames dotted about. I plan to have these football related to get the idea across that my main character is pretty obsessed with football, thus reiterating the fact, he really just wants to sit down and watch the match. As of now, however, I believe my scene is ready to animate in, the last of the furnishings shouldn’t get in the way of the animation. I plan to just decorate the scene abit so that it is less bland. The main furniture is all set as well as the cameras and lighting.

I plan to Xref my set into each scene, so that in saves on RAM when I am animating. The main advantage to why I am using this approach is that this allows me to edit things in the original set, for example add in a lamp, and for it to be updated in every scene, saving me time from having to go in and add a lamp into every scene. This shall be used when I have time to fill out the set with CDs, books, DVDs, etc. It will also be useful if I wanted to change colour schemes or textures later on during production.