Digital Environments/Visual Studies: An Introduction

Group Name:
"The Funky Junkers"

Group Members:
Sanjay Sen (Myself)
Oliver Kane
Stephanie Joy
Greg Martin
Ashley Umanee
Nikko Sierra

The Brief of this project is to design a digital environment. The environment must be based on some real world features and then can be extrapolated (if justifiable) in to the final abstracted product.

We initially started off mainly with wild and wonderful ideas! Soon we decided that if we wanted to have a thorough collection of research then it would be best to find a well known historical period in which to base our ideas from. Our options included Ancient Egypt, Rome, Greece and even the Inca Tribes.

After much thought we decided that we wanted to create an olden oriental environment. Further to this, some of our first initial research indicated an event where a fleet of ships sailed from China to explore the rest of the world.

The idea was brimming with history and culture yet it also seemed quite original too. We concluded that we would digitally build and reconstruct a Chinese Junk Ship internal and externally. Our idea not only takes us to an unfamiliar time in an unfamiliar culture, we are also displacing the audience to an unfamiliar setting (i.e the sea). In this way all of the group were very pleased with the idea as a whole and were very keen to get started.

Having a group of talented and ambitious members, we have already decided that we will be pushing ourselves to a new level. Some of the problems we may face on top of our environment project may involve communication, work allocation, management and planning. However if we can keep ourselves disciplined in our work flow we should be able to take this vast project, break it down into manageable pieces, assign those to the group members and reassemble it.

We will also be challenged in other more technical ways. However the most important aspect to get right is the concept. We require a lot of research into ships, Ancient China, architecture, art etc. This is the foundation on which the rest of our project lies. If we can not make the little things in our environment fit, then we are endanger of mixing cultures, mixing times and mixing facts! In other words, to make our environment believable, constant research is a must. We have to collectively find, develop and re-evaluate. Using this as a basis, I am sure that our idea will constantly evolve with each week and hopefully create the desired effect.