OUAN406 - Designing the Laboratory Set

During the planning process I had in mind that I wanted to design and produce two sets in total. The reason I chose two is I was trying to find the balance between having enough to work with in terms of different things to shoot and focus on whilst having a realistic work goal and making sure that the final piece is finished before the deadline to a high standard. With this particular module I want to make the title sequence to the highest standard possible because in the past it has been the final animation that has brought my work down and I feel I focused a lot of effort on the design and research areas of the project meaning I had less time to work on the animation during the allocated time for the brief. Furthermore, whilst considering which two settings I wanted to use as the two in the title sequence I read back through sections of the book and considered which two locations would be the most ideal for setting the scene and would reflect the story in the most basic way without giving away details about where the story goes. From this, I concluded that two suitable environments from the story in which a lot of the story is set, especially near the beginning are the city itself, so the audience are given a sense of scale and an insight into the kind of world the story is set. The other more enclosed set I planned to make was the main character, Isaac's, laboratory. The reason for choosing a much smaller scale environment for the other is for variation, but more so that I can depict a certain level of detail that I probably won't be able to create with a city given the scale and finally to show characters in locations.

The first set I'm making due to the fact that in my mind it's much more important to the sequence than the city is the laboratory. If time becomes and issue then I can just adjust the narrative and the storyboard to suit the one set, and work around it like that. This was one of the ideas I had when I first decided on the idea of building the sets myself, until I thought there could perhaps be room for another setting within the title sequence, and I could shift between the two to create some interesting visuals. In terms of the process of making the laboratory set, I first spoke to Roger in the wood and metal workshop to see what kind of thing was possible, before I started designing anything. He was really helpful, and said, like mentioned in a previous post. 'Firstly, will the set be fixed or will you be able to take it apart and remove sections of it, this could be useful for several reasons such as attaching or detaching other segments of set if the need arises, or even transporting it around if I needed to move it somewhere. Next, how will lights or cameras be attached to make any lighting arrangement I want possible, also to be able to shoot different camera angles, cameras could be fixed to the set or rigged in different ways, so this is something that will also have to be considered. Another important factor is props, when asked if I was going to buy miniatures from arts of dolls houses for example or make the props myself by hand I said I was going to do a combination of both, to make sure anything I want to use as a prop is available to me, and how I think it should be. The more obvious things that come to mind when thinking about the pre-production planning and overall design and making of the set is things like size and more importantly scale, as well as materials and overall cost. I would be making it with a very little budget so I am trying to be as economical as possible when it comes to time, money and overall design of the things I'm making.'

I had never before looked into set design, at least in this much detail before, and it looked like a very lengthy but interesting process, so I was excited to start developing my idea further. The first thing I did to get my head around what I would be making and how I wanted to approach it is start looking at 3D spaces, and designing some potential room shapes that would work well at displaying the kind of setting I needed it to and be able to hold the different types of furniture comfortably. This started off as a challenge for me because I had very rarely had to drawn designs in a 3D space like this, but as I became more accustomed to it, it became easier and I managed to produce a few designs for rooms quite quickly, although, they felt too simple considering the intricacies of what the room is used for, a laboratory and the kind of strange objects that it would be filled with, they didn't feel right to me and in some ways were too simple.



Using what I'd learnt when it came to drawing objects in 3D spaces, as well as creating a 3D environment from scratch I managed to produce a design, and an overall idea that I felt I could move forward with. When designing the set, I had to take into account lighting, the space and how it interacted with objects or bits of furniture, what materials I would use for individual objects and the level of detail that would be sufficient to create a convincing set but at the same time not create too much work given the time I have to make it.



The drawing of objects in a 3D space such as this was another new thing for me, which I'd never really done before. In order to achieve the medium to high level of detail I wanted I used a huge amount of references and mood boards in order to make the objects as realistic and authentic as possible. Some of the objects I wanted to include in the environment were also quite complicated and the need for references to draw them was even more vital than some of the simpler parts of furniture. However, the objects that weren't so hard to draw were the cube or cuboid shapes, these felt quite natural to draw and all they took to make them look more interesting was a small bit of detail or decorative work around the outside. With the book case, drawing the main body of it was easy, and adding small sections such as the base and top came naturally, these objects are of course complicated when you start adding book shelves and books to them in their hollow interior but remain quite simple nonetheless. Some of the more difficult parts of this particular design was placing things like the chair in the space, as it is quite a complicated space and took a while for me to figure out of to set it up and where to place it in comparison to tables, book cases for example. Although it was another new aspect for me, something I found quite interesting and fun at the same time was lighting the environment. As far as lighting goes, this was relatively straight forward but I thought it would be best to keep it simple and not to over complicate it since I would probably make it look unnatural, and I wanted it to be quite dimly lit anyway. There are three light sources in the environment, the light bulb hanging in the center of the room, the lamp located near the book case, the light coming from the monitors under the first floor and four if you count the small amount of light coming through the windows upstairs. Despite the need for detail I did try to keep it under a certain limit because I would have to either make or purchase these objects, and I have given myself around three to four weeks start to finish to produce the sets so I can begin shooting the title sequence in plenty of time. Here is an example of the mood boards I produced not only to gather ideas and inspiration for the laboratory set but to advocate the theme and mood of the project itself through their dark and eerie qualities.