SPATIAL CONSTRUCTS- 1984 Excerpt

 A good descriptive passage from the novel of the layout of Winston's room:

For some reason the telescreen in the living-room was in an unusual
position. Instead of being placed, as was normal, in the end wall, where
it could command the whole room, it was in the longer wall, opposite the
window. To one side of it there was a shallow alcove in which Winston
was now sitting, and which, when the flats were built, had probably been
intended to hold bookshelves. By sitting in the alcove, and keeping well
back, Winston was able to remain outside the range of the telescreen, so
far as sight went. He could be heard, of course, but so long as he stayed
in his present position he could not be seen. It was partly the unusual
geography of the room that had suggested to him the thing that he was now
about to do.

It was after twenty-two hours when he got back to the flat. The lights
would be switched off at the main at twenty-three thirty. He went into the
kitchen and swallowed nearly a teacupful of Victory Gin. Then he went to
the table in the alcove, sat down, and took the diary out of the drawer.
But he did not open it at once. From the telescreen a brassy female voice
was squalling a patriotic song. He sat staring at the marbled cover of the
book, trying without success to shut the voice out of his consciousness.

SPATIAL CONSTRUCTS- 1984- Experimenting with nCloth

I needed to develop the bed in my scene a little and felt that it needed a duvet. I started by creating a plane with plenty of sub-divisions and used soft select to push and pull the polys around in an attempt to create life-like folds. This technique however did not produce the desired result and I started to look into other options.

I had seen tools in Maya regarding 'nCloth' but had never looked into exactly what it was or how it could be applied. After a little research and experimentation I discovered that nCloth can provide exceptionally powerful cloth simulation that would be perfect for creating a natural looking folded duvet.

 

I started by creating a high poly plane that I converted into an nCloth object. This was then positioned on the bed as a duvet would normally be found and primitives were placed around it. These primitives were converted to 'Passive Colliders' so that the cloth would collide against them and I could therefore use these primitives to deform the plane how I wished.

 

I hid these planes so that I could see the scene a little better and set up a simple animation. The primitive on the right was rotated in such a way as to mimic someone using their arm to move the duvet aside as they get out of bed. This allowed the plane to deform and bend in a very natural way.

 

Further deformation can be seen. Settings such as friction and gravity had to be carefully tweaked in order to achieve the desired result.

 

An example of the finished animation. When the cloth is in a desired position I simply went into the outliner and deleted all references to nCloth settings and exported the mesh as the final deformed polygons. This could then be dropped into the final scene and is ready for a games engine.

SPATIAL CONSTRUCTS- 1984- Updated Build

The scene has come leaps and bounds recently. I have modeled a lot of the interior as well as a significant amount of the props I would like to include. The lighting is also working really well and adds a lot of atmosphere to the scene. I particularly like how the light from the windows is working, as the criss-cross pattern really adds to the 'busy' nature of the kitchen worktops, and the clear window pane lands perfectly on the desk where Winston's diary can be found. This acts as a great visual cue that will hopefully draw the players attention to this important narrative point.

SPATIAL CONSTRUCTS- 1984- Initial Build

This initial build was developed primarily to determine the size and geometry of the room. Although I used the correct UDK scale in my Maya scene, and included a cuboid matching the size of the player and some basic props, when the scene was imported into UDK it could often feel bigger or smaller than it looked in Maya. This required a 'back and forth' approach of importing into UDK and tweaking in Maya in order to determine a comfortable scale for the scene.

Winston's flat in the book is quite complex: containing a living room, bathroom and kitchen. In the film his room is comparatively simple: a single box room with few distinctive features besides his bed, sink and telescreen. I decided to design a combination of the two, containing things to one single room but introducing a kitchen and other distinctive features to help populate the room.

This build also helped in determining a rough lighting setup for the scene. I wanted the window light to be the most prominent light source in the scene and for it to 'point' to an important narrative prop in the scene: the diary. This blue light is to be contrasted by warmer electrical lights in the room that will subtly draw attention to other interesting elements in the scene.

I am happy with this layout and will get to work on modelling the various props in the scene.

SPATIAL CONSTRUCTS- 1984 Film Screen-caps

These are a series of screen-caps from Michael Rudford's film version of 1984. The film remains quite faithful to the book and provides some great visual reference. Some elements differ from the book and I will be using a combination of both to develop my interpretation of the scene. 

Big Brother

The door to Winston's room. I particularly like the old worn light switch.

Rudford's interpretation of the telescreen. I'm not sure how much I like this design, as it does not look 'high-tech' enough and will try to develop my own version of it that more closely matches the book.

Winston's 'Victory Cigarettes'.

A shot of the Telescreen watching Winston.

This scene is particularly interesting. This is Winston pulling out a loose brick to reveal the hiding place of his secret diary. This is very different to the book, where Winston keeps his diary in the drawer of a desk, stating that hiding it is useless: if they are in his flat looking for the diary they will find it and he is doomed anyway. This concept is described through Winston's inner monologue and as such would be difficult to convey visually. Therefore the director obviously wanted a more visual representation of the secrecy of the diary and as such chose to conceal it behind this loose brick. I am not sure which version I would like to use for my own scene and will be considering the visual and narrative impact of both. This scene also lacks an important feature: in the book, Winston writes his diary in a small alcove next to the telescreen where he cannot be seen. I do not understand why this detail was omitted from the film but I will be including this element in my design.

A good shot of the bed, chair and other props.

A clear shot of the windows.

A shot of the surrounding area around Winston's flat. 

Some interesting props to populate the scene.

A good shot of the 'Ingsoc' logo as well as the spy helicopters that watch citizens through their windows.

I particularly like the light next to Winston's head.

This scene is actually in Winston's neighbor's house, however is filled with great props that I will bring into Winston's room for the purposes of the scene.

A shot of Winston's view from his window at night. I particularly like the lighting and have decided to set my scene at night as well. This will allow for dramatic lighting as well as reducing the work required to render the outside, as most details will be obscured due to the dark.

The building opposite Winston's room. This differs from the book where most of Winston's view is obscured by the building opposite, most of which is covered by a huge poster of Big Brother that stares right into Winston's room. I think that this is a really strong visual detail the was omitted from the film and will be including this in my scene if time allows. Another detail that was not included in the film was Winston's view of his place of work: the towering Ministry building, The Ministry of Truth . This gleaming pyramid towers above the rest of London and is strong focal point that I am keen to include. 

The building opposite Winston's room. I particularly like the style of windows and will incorporate them into my design.

The clock in Winston's room. All clocks in this world are 24 hour, the book opens with the clocks 'striking 13', and is a small detail that I will be sure to include.

A great shot of Winston's favorite drink: Victory gin. 

SPATIAL CONSTRUCTS- 1984- Winston's Room

I have decided that I would like to build Winston's flat for my Spatial Constructs submission.

I chose this area for a number of reasons:

Often I feel that in most stories, the protagonist's home is one of the most interesting areas in the story. It often reveals much about this character and gives the viewer an insight into their lives and habits. In the book for example, Winston's room is mainly filled with gin bottles, as he spends most of his free time drowning out his sorrows, as well as the pain of the varicose ulcer on his ankle. I felt that by focusing on this area, I could include lots of little details that paint a larger picture about the character that lives here.

Thematically, Winston's room is also very important, as it is here where he writes his diary. This diary is Winston's first fearful steps down the road of 'thoughtcrime' and the simple act of owning this object puts him in grave danger. He uses this diary to articulate and better understand his own thoughts about the state of his life and the world around him. I therefore felt that this area had great significance within the context of the story and this element would help add a sense of narrative to the scene.

Finally, I felt that from a production standpoint, Winston's room looked like an interesting area to build that would require a number of techniques and close observation to create effectively. Being a room with three solid walls and a fourth with a long window, it significantly lowered the amount of required assets. The majority of the character of the room would come from the various scattered props and this allowed for the scale of the project to be changed as required. An outdoor environment viewed through the window is currently planned but could be cut if necessary. The texturing process will also be very enjoyable as all the surfaces are very old and worn and I thoroughly enjoy texturing surfaces like this.

I plan to take a series of screen-caps of the film and note down descriptive passages in the novel in order to get a better understanding of the layout and content of this room.

SPATIAL CONSTRUCTS- Brief

For this particular module we were given the task to pick a piece of writing from a list of authors and develop an environment that reflected a particular scene or event in this writing.

I picked George Orwell's 1984, as it is a story that I know very well, and has a particularly interesting context and setting. I felt that sticking with an author I was familiar with was an important decision as it saved me a lot of time, as I was not trawling through various author's works to find an interesting environment.

I will be using both the book and Michael Radford's 1984 film release of the same name as reference points for development while I consider what scene I would like to build.