The Art of The Cambridge Five

The Art of the Cambridge Five

The Cambridge Five Final Renders

The Cambridge Five: Technical Document

Technical Document for The Cambridge Five

The Cambridge Five: Modelling Progress

I've been so focused on modelling my scene that I have forgotten to keep up progress updates on the blog. So far I'm putting on the finishing touches to the modelling of the lair itself and as for the spy assets that will fill the rooms I have a majority of them modeled with only a small number left to complete. With two weeks left uv mapping, texturing and lighting will be a tight fit however not every single asset in my level will require mapping and the ones that do I suspect will not be too troublesome.

 The doors turned out nearly identical to the concept art which was pleasing to see.

  Don't worry the humans are reference only :)

 I added in the curtains as a way to diffuse the empty space of the ceiling and also to accentuate the unique circular skylight.

This is a screen grab viewing with the Viewport 2.0 renderer which closely simulates how the level will look in a games engine.

The Cambridge Five: Table v.2

After a few creative criticisms it was evident that the base of the globe drew away from the concept art of the table so I've gone back and remodeled the globe supports to be attached directly to the table for a more sleek look.

The Cambridge Five: Conference Table Model

I felt like I wasn't making headway with the overall lair modelling so I've gone in to model the assets to go into it. The table didn't present any problems whilst modelling and I've tried to keep the poly count to a minimum since this is for a video game.

The Cambridge Five: Lair Cutout Concept

I feel that the circular design of the lair will be the final choice so I'll start blocking out the base model of the lair in maya. The idea is that the lair was built as an add-on addition to the manor owned by the spies.

The Cambridge Five: Chair Designs

These chairs are to go along with the conference table.

The Cambridge Five: Conference Table Designs

The conference table will be the center of attention in my lair scene so I wanted to make it extravagant and keeping to the Bond style of Ken Adams. I wanted to have something on the table that would be a focal point to the meetings so I'm going for a globe of the world or some computer monitors.

The Cambridge Five: Door Designs

So far I've been doing thumbnails for the overall layout of the lair but little in terms of detail and attention to style. I've begun to design the more intricate details of the room and here I've done four door designs and one of which I will use for each spies door. Since there will be five doors in the room I figured it would be a prominent feature that will instantly catch the eye so I wanted them to appear very flashy.

The Cambridge Five: Further Lair Layout Experimentation

I've decided to further experiment with the circular lair design with these two concepts and toying with room proportions and scale.

Touchstone Interim Document

Touchstone document

The Cambridge Five: Initial Lair Layout Ideas

While I'm still working out how the lair design will incorporate each spies individual personalities I've gone ahead and tried to get the general shape and layout of the lair itself in place so that afterwards I can go in and start remodeling it based on the spies. So far I'm trying to work with the number of spies so five in this case and have five different sections for each spy.

The Cambridge Five Branding

For the branding I wanted to incorporate a Soviet style with a predominant red colour scheme, for the font however I went with Bauhaus in the final designs because I felt it paid tribute to the type designs of older Bond film posters. I feel that visually number 3 of page 2 looks the strongest in terms of graphic design.

 

Major Project: The Cambridge Five

I felt that even though I'm doing a video game environment I wanted to show the Cambridge Five villains to have them accompany the lair design within the art of. I whipped up portraits for the five spies with basic toon shading; I also had to de-age a few of the portraits because the reference images were of them in old age.

Major Project: Influence Maps for the Lair

Now that I've decided to move forward with the villain lair belonging to the Cambridge Five I'm deciding on the style the house will be set upon in between the 1950s and 70s. I want to incorporate a mixture of upper class British with a subtle underlining of Soviet design. The secret lair will be a customised house of the privileged Cambridge Five and won't adhere to 'normal' standards of houses from that age.
A big thanks to Phil as well for pointing me towards the Spy Vibe blog that has a good source of spy-esque images.

I will also be looking at art movements from those decades to further enrich the design of the lair.

Major Project: Spy Lair Influence

This home in the Stella Artois advert has a similar theme of what I want for my home with hidden compartments and equipment.

Major Project: Refining the Spy Hideout

Out of my five ideas (spy hideout, mage's home, crashed ship, parkour circuit, and the turret defense) the spy hideout seems to have received the most positive attention. My original plan for the hideout involved basing it in the 1960s to 70s with secret rotating panels for equipment however after speaking with Alan it was clear that if I did not create a context or 'hook' for the hideout then it would just simply become an 'area'.
So I went about researching further into historical spies and espionage stories and that led me to two of the most famous spy rings the Portland Ring and the Cambridge Five (I guess they were only famous because there were so few spies exposed). The Portland Ring was led by a ladies man Russian spy by the name of Konon Molody and were passing information on naval weaponry to the KGB. It was the Cambridge Five ( Kim Philby, Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, Anthony Blunt, and possibly John Cairncross) that caught my interest however as they were five British graduates of Cambridge University who loved their country, hated Fascism but also preferred the ideals of Communism.

 My idea will be transferring from a spy hideout of  the main character to a villain lair of the Cambridge Five and since they were from a privileged upper class the lair can venture into the eccentric. A combination of British architecture of manor houses with the stark contrast of Soviet Communist style. However since the Cambridge Five existed well into the 70s before they were exposed the house could also incorporate retro furnishings.

Major Project: The Ideas

It's time to finally get a move on with the Major Project aka the big finale.

I've written up several rough ideas with the basis of creating a stand-alone video game environment; it will be created as a showcase piece and not playable however it still has to be video game minded.
I will keep narrowing down ideas then once I've made my decision on the final one I will do further research for it, select an art style and move on from there.

Major Project Ideas

The Art of "Bosch's Nightmare"

Final Renders

  Minor Project Art Of "Bosch's Nightmare"