Unit 6 - Where are we?
- Jesse-Phoenix
- Oct 30, 2024
- 7 min read
This unit we were given the task of creating concepts for 3 things we were randomly assigned. I was given a Pottery Shop in St Petersburg in 1215 A.D. which to me seemed a challenge I was up to. Through my research however I found that St. Petersburg wasn't founded until 1703. This made things a little more difficult so I based my shop geographically where St Petersburg is but it's not the St Petersburg we know, more like a small village.
Russia was actually a lot smaller in 1215 A.D. than to what it is now, it also wasn't known as Russia to the people back then, it was known as Kiev Rus.
This is a map of 13th Century Russia, Kiev Rus. I added onto the map where St. Petersburg is located in current Russia.
Research:
So I started with moodboarding my research into modern day Russia because I wanted to look at Russian architecture, as well as shapes that I could incorporate into my design to make it clear that it was set in St. Petersburg. I did end up using the repetitive dome shape seen below for the teapot lid handle as I thought it was a very distinctive shape that could make my design be easily read as "Russian".
I then moved on to the architectural styles of the period, I made 3 mood boards for this. I first looked at Gothic architecture of Western Society, as within the 13th Century this was the main architectural style. I thought I could include some elements of this style within my design but later down the line I didn't end up using the Gothic architecture. However, I did end up using a Gothic font for my sign because I didn't want some of my research to go to waste, and because I thought the font fitted in well within the design.
Following on from the Gothic architecture, my research into Russian 13th Century architecture led me to these traditional houses. They were known as Izbas and they can be dated back to the 9th Century, some people in Russia still live in them today and will most likely be found in Eastern Russia and the Siberian areas. I found these structures quite cute in a way, they're quaint and look very homely which is the atmosphere I wanted to create. I wanted to make this style the main focus of my shop. My shop design was heavily inspired by the Izbas, in terms of material, I did use the window shapes for the windows in my shop.
Through researching a little further I found out that Mongols had invaded Russia in 1223 (this was after Gengis Khan had died), which is a little after the time period I was given, but I thought I could give myself more to work with and "steal" from. Mongolians lived in tent-like structures called Yurts, and I thought this was such an interesting thing that I could work with, within my shop design. I had at one point thought about making my teapot out of a tent material at first but gave up with that idea after playing with the cloth modifier, I just couldn't get the cloth to fall in a way that would scream 'tent' and it would've taken me a long time to sculpt the creases in.
After researching the architecture of the period I moved on to the pottery side of my shop, as a pottery shop with no pottery is useless. I tried looking for Russian pottery from this period but was very difficult to find as a lot of the pottery that I had found from this period was either Persian or Mongolian pottery, which led me to researching when Mongolians had invaded Russia, as I previously knew they had. So instead I looked at current Russian pottery and found that a lot of it was heavily influenced by the Mongolians and also most likely the Chinese, since they share a border in the South East. I was heavily inspired by these designs, so much so that I picked bits from a lot of them to be painted onto the teapot.
I also looked into some references into how snow settles on the ground, especially when it's really thick snow. St. Petersburg, and Russia as a whole, is very cold and can fall quite heavily in some parts, so I thought this could help me draw and also model the snow.
Narrative:
My shop is owned by an old lady names Olga. She's a very organised woman and likes to keep things neat and tidy. Although, her life does get a bit hectic and she over makes the pottery so she ends up having to stack some of it outside her shop. She makes the pottery for the village in which she lives in, and she used to do an exchange with the other villagers, they giver her clay, she gives them pottery. This was going well until the village decided to stop giving her clay because it was "too expensive", so she started selling her pottery for profit. This led to her sending her two children, Alexei and Anya, to Novgorod to get more clay.
I was thinking if this were to be made for an animation that the target audience would 6-12 year-olds.
Style Inspiration:
I looked at a few films for style inspiration as I didn't want to have a photorealistic shop.
I looked into Anastasia (1997) since the story follows the Russian princess Anastasia and, the first 20-30 minutes is set in St. Petersburg.
I also looked at Treasure Planet (2002) for the art style. This is one of my favourite animated films of all time, what is really interesting with this film is the mixing of 2d animation with the usual painted environments and 3D assets.
Klaus was another film I looked into however, I didn't really look into it because of it's art style but more to do with how they lit the scenes and how that light interacted with snow.
The Hobbit has always been a family favourite film in my house and I wanted to pay tribute to it within my work and was struggling in my design stages on what shape the door to the teapot should be. I happened to be watching The Lord of the Rings and saw the door to Bilbo's house and thought that a circular door will add some charm and whimsy to the shop front.
While I did concentrate a lot of my style inspiration into films I also looked into art done of St. Petersburg. I first found the works of Aleksandr Pavlovič Bruillov, and I fell in love with his painting style. He used watercolours for his pieces. So this inspired me to have the background behind the shop to be a watercolour sunset.
Another artist I looked into was Claude Monet, I love the vibrancy of his works and wanted to keep this vibrancy within my this specific design. I also find his work really interesting to look at because from far away his works look really detailed but up close less so.
Sketches:
My designs and sketches has changed a lot from my original ideas. I wanted to steer clear of traditional buildings, especially with inspiration from the Izbas, so I lent into the Mongolian Yurt idea first. My plan was to make this tent that has panels that could open up to make the shop bigger. However, I found through my sketches that I found it really hard to stylise the shapes, even if I made the dome part of the tent top heavy, most of my designs ended up looking roughly the same.
So to combat this I did a quick little sketch task. I picked different shaped pottery to draw to keep within the profession of pottery shop.
After I had given myself this task I picked on a design I liked the best to move forward with. I liked the idea of having a pottery shop inside a teapot. I had this idea of it lying on its side and had started modelling the shapes until I asked around to see if my shop resembled a teapot, most people said it didn't so I had a rethink of the design.
I then came up with this idea of a half buried teapot, like the previous sketches but I changed the orientation so that it was obvious it was a teapot.
After nearly finishing my shop, I realised that I hadn't really thought about the font for my sign. So I looked at gothic fonts to tie in my research of the gothic architecture. I found the four above as I thought they best fitted with the vision I had. I didn't like the bottom one, it wasn't very gothic in my opinion, the second one down is very hard to read, it's squashed, the 'H' looks like an 'N'. It does look more gothic than the bottom font but I had to look at readability as well as the style. The second font was the most gothic but in my opinion didn't fit with the teapot or the rest of the design, so I went with the first font and am very happy I did.
Final Design:
Blender:
One of the struggles I really had with blender was when I tried using the cloth modifier to make the main structure of the teapot look like a tent. When the modifier was applied, the tent didn't look 'tenty' enough and it was hard to tell it was cloth as it all bunched up towards the bottom. I decided to scrap the tent idea completely and used wood planks as the texture of the teapot instead to relate back to the Izbas. Another problem I had was with snow. I had to figure out different nodes to make the texture and also how to create the unevenness of the snow as well. I had found the 'Real Snow' add on and that gave me a sort of base for the snow. At first the snow looked a little like shaving cream, so I changed the roughness from 0.00 to 1.00. I played with the nodes it had generated, the main thing that made the snow look less like snow and more like wool was the emissions strength and colour, so I played around with the emission strength and colour as well. To combat the flatness and to make the snow look like it had piled up over time, I added the solidify modifier and the multiresolution modifier so that I could sculpt the changes in levels a lot easier.
Blender Render:
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