Masters Project

<p>Technically the Masters Project started with CAPT as its pre-production, and PI as its supplement, as we have been "strongly recommended" to do by our tutors once upon a time (March). <br><br>
Anyway this is just a quick log of what I need to add to the Production Diary hand-in:<ul>
<li>continued concept art for fungi units
<li>read article and tutorial on modular modeling
<li>bought udk modular modeling dvd, damn expensive
<li>laptop's C:\ died, rendering it un-bootable, fucking sad-face.  Lost all programs and games along with hard drive, spend £149 for repair, new hard drive, and some data recovery.
</ul></p>

...

...I got no time what-so-ever to write here right now. Not with research this, research that, production diary this, self reflect that, slides this, slides that, and a TED-length talk looming over my head like an axe. I don't know why I thought challenging my weakness will be fun. I hate public speaking more than I hate dentist visits. And I really hate dentist visits.

CAPT individual production journal 4

After deciding that Earth went to waste due to warming and water pollution. I followed up on tutors' suggestions from presentation 1 & 2.

Spent half a day looking up environment artists from various PC game developers whose game I either have played or at least seen being played. Not all of them have individual contact information available. In the end I emailed to 12 artists whose emails worked. So far 4 replied with helpful suggestions and further resources to investigate.

Following up on their suggestions, Dev and I quickly established sets of color themes for the landscape, sky, and structures. Types of plants most likely to be there.

Spent a few days looking through books and online resources on soil types. What general types are there, what are their nutrient attributes, etc. But they all relate to gardening pretty flowers in a healthy world. They don't provide basis for the kind of land and flora design I have in mind for this environment.

Meanwhile also looked at many documentaries on plants and films that had themes of garden or environmentalism. While their ideas and styles are not directly contributing to my design direction, they sort of showed me what I don't want this project to look like.

During this search I came across a book on plant conservation. One of the articles talked about how experimental garden should be designed, and, more importantly, gave a case study on the recovery of alkaline soil through plants. However I did not pursuit that lead further for another day or two.

Also briefly looked at suggestions such as Laputa, BioShock Infinite, etc, but those floating cities are Utopian, pretty, and civilized. At least in appearance and construction. Mine is just a DIY lab of plant conservation and engineering.

Classmates I spoke to about the stuck research suggested looking into desert reclamation, and reclamation of polluted lands. Now I can't remember who suggested them, but Jack suggested one of them. It seemed so obvious and straightforward now, but at the time, for some reason, I did not think of looking straight to pollution and recovery. I blame panic.

Meanwhile I've been gathering reference images for soil types as well as rock formations. Still they don't look to fit together well.

From desert reclamation and pollution restore I came across the phrase "environmental remediation", "soil remediation", and "bioremediation". It turned out there's a whole science field, and a whole bookshelf at the library, on that topic. If only I knew.

I looked up remediation of soil contaminated with heavy metal and oil. Took down species names to look up and base concept art designs off of. Meanwhile, I revisited what kind of pollution the soil might have. Since heavy metal contamination is not visible on surface, I decided to push the oil leak part, and try to incorporate tar. I also looked up documentary photographs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki after they were nuked for landscape design of a polluted, war-torn land that came to be abandoned.

Meanwhile, I compiled a color board for a polluted atmosphere, as well as some island shapes that incorporate more of the tar and destroyed building. Further research into bioremediation revealed that many types of plants are used, and not just microscopic fungi, bacteria, and algae. Unfortunately, all those savior plants' appearance are modest with similar looking blossoms. Design-wise that isn't good news, even with mutation and distortion from environmental radiation. I will have to return to the microscopic ones to find better basis for design.