At Wimbledon our BA Production Arts for Screen course offers a unique combination of design and making skills for film, television, and other screen-based media.
Here we take a closer look at the class of 2021’s UAL Graduate Showcase submissions. We asked BA Production Arts for Screen graduates Alfie Lloyd, Hannah Seddon and Wonji Kim to reveal more about their final projects featuring a range of themes from traditional myths and interactive stories to labyrinthine space stations and holiday nostalgia.
My aim for this project has been to create an immersive and explorative digital sci-fi environment with some interactive elements. Circadia refers to the concept of a 24-hour recurring cycle that will form a narrative component.
I’ve developed a sort of visual proof-of-concept for this focusing my attention for the last 9 weeks on designing a few core locations within a space-station scene, placed in a fictional 80s-90s period. Connected by a labyrinthine network of corridors and service tunnels, the setting can be explored and many aspects of it can be interacted and engaged within real-time.
Everything in these scenes has been conceptualised, designed, and realised by myself; with the components of the setting being sculpted in Blender, the textures created in Adobe Substance and finally brought together within Unreal Engine.
My longer-term goal for this work is to develop a narrative utilising this idea of recurring cycles; an interactive story that is observed through changes to my digital environment in a sequence of ‘loops’. The user would be placed in a detective role, trying to work out the reason for these time-loops from the evidence and changes taking place around them in their immersive location. Though this is not present yet, my overall design has been informed by this future narrative.
View more of Alfie’s work on the UAL Showcase 2021
I wanted to create a rich, vibrant world with strong lighting that made the viewer yearn for the holiday they didn't get this year. Due to the pandemic, I think the idea of escapism through entertainment became more important than ever. When there was nothing to do, we turned to platforms like Netflix, Amazon Prime and the world of games to give us something to do. I chose to adapt Around the world in 80 days, into a kid’s animation.
I wanted to create something bold and bright that would transport audience's to somewhere colourful and warm, somewhere I personally wanted to be but most of all I wanted it to be fun.
With the time spent working from home I was able to really focus on my digital skill set! One of my final project’s pre-pandemic was created using the real-time 3D creation platform Unreal Engine, so it was all digital. I come from a family of tech wizards, so, during the pandemic I really researched the games market and made a list of all the skills I would need. I began to work through them and find out what I liked what I didn’t.
I discovered that, I loved not only just the art side of games but really found I had a passion for the technical skills. I do not think I would have discovered I liked these things if it were not for the pandemic.
View more of Hannah’s work on the UAL Showcase 2021
I wanted to make something with a design that incorporates technology, sci fi, culture and my own history. A combination of the modern history of Seoul and traditional values and practices in Korea but set in the future.
The main idea is from a Korean traditional myth: Dragon Egg Harvesting: young-al tteugi (Kor. 용알뜨기, meaning digging up dragon eggs)
According to the belief, at the dawn of the day of the first full moon of the year dragons descend to the village wells and lay eggs. Only the first person to draw water from the well can get the dragon eggs and by having rice cooked with the water, the family will have a good luck and a good harvest for the year.
They could draw the water with the dragon eggs only when there came the first call of a rooster, so it needed patience and diligence. People considered the bubbles in the drawn water as the eggs. The more bubbles there were, the better it was. In a few regions, it's the reflection of the full moon that was considered as the egg on the surface of the water. In Korean Shamanism (or folk religion), dragons are considered as the gods of water, and they are believed to live anywhere where water exists.
I got the elements of the full moon, dragons and the well from this myth. I then added the idea of advanced technology and set it in one of the ecological parks in Seoul. The island where the park is located used to be a water purification plant. When the city went under an industrialisation phase, the plant became out of use it was then developed into an ecological park. l thought the development of the city could be applied to my design as it shows industrialisation but also then restoring the eco system.
I started to visualise the idea by doing some concept art in Photoshop. When the visual reference reached a level that was clear enough, I started to model the assets in the scene on Autodesk 3ds Max and Maya. Blender was used for UV mapping and baking and Substance Painter was used to texture the models. Plants were created in SpeedTree. Created assets were imported into Unreal Engine 4 for the layout, lighting and effects, and the final render. View more of Wonji’s work on the UAL Showcase