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I have decided on a fairly sound title for my project, from here on my game will officially be called Culture Shock. I have made a nice pretty logo as well using Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop.

The Logo may however be changed as i go along. Today i handed in my learning agreement and everything that goes with it, so that's all done. Right now i am going to append my logo and post some more blogs here.

Now with a little altering the banner loks a little different. I am very welcoming of comments, especially to do with the banner.

Technology

I have also looked into the steampunk side of this project too, looking at some of the machinery and technology used during the time to get an idea of how the technology would be different in my alternate universe.








The above come from a variety of books i got out of the library, one includes Fred Dibnah, an industrial revolution historian who had a television show for the BBC who recently passed away. I have been looking at a lot of steam engines as i have an idea that steam power would be very important for most of the machines i wish to design.

I have also found some paintings from the time showing some industrial scenes, they seem to have more atmosphere than the black and white photographs as more attention has been applied to lighting and composition.

Films and Newspapers

Thought i'd cover two posts in one here, I also watched a Bollywood film about an Indian village under the tight grip of a greedy English captain who administrates some cruel treatment of the people in the province he rules over. The film was called Lagaan and was made in 2003, It was very useful as i got an insight into the attitudes of India, the film blended story and acting with song and dance, and i had no idea it was a musical until the first song kicked in. In the end they manage to overcome the oppressive British overlords using peaceful methods.

Also i found a newspaper from the early 1860's which deals with some of the atrocities dealt by the British during the Sepoy Rebellion of the late 1850's. Unfortunately i got it from an American, far right wing, hate site trying to insight hatred towards the British, i don't deny that what it says is true however, but since the newspaper comes from the United states
at a time when the British were there mortal enemy, it may take some bias. The British did do some seriously dispicable things in it's history and it would be highly disresepectful to the victims to deny this ever happened, so i wanted to highlight that this project will show an unbiased view towards both parties involved during this period of history, historical accuracy (With everything except for technology) is very important to me.


This image shows Indian prisoners of wars being ties to the mouths of cannons.

Environment Research

I also did some research into environments, looking at some photographs taken in India which show Scenes in the country or the cities, i mostly found pictures of temples and scenes which feature elephants. I found most of these in the same book where i found the old photographs of
the people, i also got other books from the library which show various other scenes from the age which i am studying. This is very important as environment is one of the key areas i wish to study in this project.

New Photographs

Similarly, i got these photgraphs from a copy of the National Geographic magazine from 1993, they show a village community in Gujarat and Rajastan in north-Western India. Unlike the older photographs mentioned in an Earlier post, they have been photographed with dramatic effect in mind and are in colour. They will be very useful for composition as they have been composed by a professional photographer with composition and dramatic effect in mind.

Old Photographs

These Photographs i got from a book i found in the Library and they show a lot of the people from all over the social spectrum during the time of the British Raj in India, they reveal a great deal about the costumes people wore in those days and so are very useful to character design, especialy as they are not reconstructions or illustrations, they are as they would have been in the nineteenth century. They also show a lot of British soldiers mingling with the Hindu aristocracy which shows a wider variety of costume.

Summer

I have included a brief series of images which detail all the work i have been doing over the summer. Some of my drawings have appeared in Insight magazine which details some of the local artists in the Humberside area, i have also been to an exhibition at The Imperial Hall in Epworth where i tried to get myself known to the local art community where i live. Included are some of the paintings i did over the summer, some of which were submitted for my exhibition.

First blog

Hello all! juststarted my blog, a little later than most people, this is because i have mainly been researching and i don't have a lot of artwork to show quite yet, but rest assured, i am working on some thumbnails as we speak for my first few paintings. I have over 250mb of research at the moment and will show you some of the things i have been working on.

Right now i have some old work to show you as i made sure i kept busy during the summer, some of these come from my Facebook, while some of them are more recent than that. I was atanexhibition showing my work at a local arts fair in my home village, i managed to make ONE WHOLE POUND!!! selling pictures to the public, but it was useful to meet the other local artists in the area, i also managed to get into the insight magazine so my work has been shown around the local area at least.

For this project i have an idea, equally as unusual as last years idea (Possibly more so!) as i don't like conventions, this idea will be slightly more combat based than last years work as last year i showed i was capable of more deeper game ideas than your average gun porn, and so naturally with this game i wouldn't want violence to take a center stage if it were ever published. My idea is a game set in India during the era of the British Raj in the late nineteenth century... in an alternate steam punk universe! the tropical location will contrast with the cold industrial oppressiveness of the machines, making a bold statement about colonialism, polution and things being built in places where they don't belong, a sort of paradise spoilt the onset of big machines and multi-million pound corporations.

The story follows Guran, an ex pirate/bandit with a silver toungue and nothing to lose, from the outset of the game our hero is being held prisoner and about to be hanged the following morning, you're going to haveto use your head if you want to escape. This fits in with my dissertation which is all about the underdog and how people identify with the underdog in the wider context of popular culture. As Guran and his fellow countryfolk are being held prisoner under the iron fist of the British Empire.

One of the main reasons for the steam punk setting is that it lends itself to something i have never done before and that is drawing machinery and robots, which is in stark contrast to everything i have done before. One of the main ideas i have for this project and an avenue i will shortly begoingdown is the design of some giant and very scary, mechanical elephants used as heavily armored battle tanks by the resistance (the good duys) against the equally (Maybe moreso) technologically advanced British Empire, who have their own machines to cause fear and mayhem upon the rebelling masses who aren't going to take it lying down.

For this i have been researching the anatomy of elephants, also steam engines and nineteenth century technology as well as modern robot in popularculture like in the Mechwarrior series and the walkers used in the original Star Wars films which i noticed move not entirely unlike elephants.

I will be posting my thumbnails up as soonas possible to show you what i've been thinking and then i'll get directly into painting