Trash!

Coming back to Visual Design was not much of a challenge, game production class was a little more unsettling so I was happy when the brief was something simple, easy and primarily there as a recap on what we already know. The brief was to find some interesting trash wherever you can, model it in 3D and come up with some decent renders, 3 weeks to do that! Although of course we do have other deadlines from the other 2 modules but it seemed straight forward enough. 

I began searching for trash around where I live and through the city centre (Peterborough) where there seems to quite a bit of trash usually, although in people form… OHH BURRNED! I joke I joke. I wasn’t sure if I was looking for anything specific, bin bags and old boxes seemed to be reoccurring more than I liked. As we were meant to find interesting objects, it was annoying to say the least. I did begin working on a skip idea however; the plan was to create a mucky, old, run down skip that had been sitting in one place for decades. The 500 tri limit put this idea to rest quickly because I didn’t want an empty skip as every single one I found in real life was overflowing with crap. Going to Loughborough train station in between those 3 weeks gave me a better idea of ‘unique’ trash and from here I realised that it all has to sync, with a shadowing theme as everything at the station that was thrown out was of course used on, used for or from the trains.

With this loose ‘theme’ idea in mind I decided to have a look closer to home and pretty much raid the shed we had packed with junk from the distant past. I managed to find boxes of old Bollywood records and cassettes my dad had been collecting since before I was born, this was certainly appealing as it would hold a basic theme of music. With this as my primary focus I choose to add a speaker I found lying around under the bed. This was a challenge as I didn’t have any tri’s to show its depth, so for this asset, I was heavily reliant of the bump map.

Putting it together was not a problem, adding old food packaging and garbage bags were of course essential to show it is after all, random crap thrown out. I had a little issue with the spec/bump maps for both the speaker and bin bags, it seemed difficult to get a ‘realistic’ look but in the end I managed to make it half decent. The final renders were done using a daylight system in Max, maybe next time I will have to teach myself Marmoset to compare final renders but for now I was content. I definitely learned with this task not to underestimate the simplicity of a brief, as the most basic and easy tasks can bring unique individuality and limitations can also develop creativity. If I were to do anything different, I may have gone towards car parts, gas cylinders, and other scrap yard related things. It seems very interesting to explore these because of their metallic and reflective nature.  Is this an idea for a personal project!? I don’t knowww, Couuld Beeee XD …but seriously, I have other things to do first. TO THE TO DO’ LIST!!