Joe got a Minibus licence especially for the occasion, so to show our thanks we all fell asleep

Within 10 minutes of walking, we quickly found buildings and housing that was more than substantial for what we were aiming to achieve. The Shambles of York were the focus point of the days visit as they represented the tight narrow streets and unbalanced houses we are building for our level. The whole of the city was abundant with reference and the architecture was well aged. Another prominent feature was the number of churches and cathedrals which was beneficial for Luc (least I hope it was).

At last weeks meeting we discussed moving forward on the texturing point of view, to expand our current collection of tiling textures and so on. Dan Peacock put together a Art Brief detailing a recommended art palette, how certain areas should have certain primary colours depending on their location. Building and terrain textures are currently one of our primary priorities, so the reference from York has aided our team members in that area.

Luc's suggested improvements to my buildings

Our level in CryEngine is really beginning to take shape now, with the terrain now altered and a whitebox Tower bridge and South Bank included, it's starting to expand beautifully. Whilst some of us are making adjustments to our modular buildings, such as improving the skeletal structure in my case, we are looking into concepting the streets neighbouring Pudding Lane. This is to give some form of identity to them as we do not want every street looking the same, of course the distribution and types of props shall help us in this case as well, something else which I am working on currently.

Last week our goal was to build two basic modular houses (or in Luc's case, churches) each. However, due to a few technical issues, some of the buildings weren't ready to be put into CryEngine by the deadline. As such, this week most of us have worked on updating the models and making sure that they can be properly imported into the editor. As well as this, we have also all been given a few individual tasks to complete.

Rutland County Museum visit Team Photo - Daniel Peacock,  Luc Fontenoy and Joe Dempsey

Only New Drop Gallows in England

Texture Reference

Reference for potential props

Reference for potential props

Texture Reference

Texture Reference

Last week we set ourselves the task of getting some concepts ready in the form of mood paintings, architectural designs and more detailed white boxes in the hope of moving swiftly onto the modelling stage.

Tavern Concept - Chelsea Lindsay

Street concept - Joe Dempsey

Mood Paintin - Daniel Peacock

Pudding Lane - Joe Dempsey

Mood concept - Joe Dempsey

Mood Painting - Luc Fontenoy

We feel we've captured the mood we want to create really well in these pieces, a dark and gloomy representation of the narrow london streets, where everything is dirty and plague ridden. At the start of the week however we were all over the place with regards to what areas we were each concepting. The idea was to each cover one area of London and build up some ideas, but we realised that instead we should all focus our efforts onto one area at a time, blocking them out quickly and building up detail, then moving on until we have a substantial amount of 17th century London covered.

Right now we're focusing our efforts on the area around Pudding Lane, and we'll branch out from there as we progress


As a group, we were very happy with how the presentation went and the feedback we received, despite being slightly unprepared. We got out point across, and we feel our ideas, although ambitious, are very achievable.

The plan for this week is to begin modelling and each have a modular asset completed by the end of the week, so we can start blocking out the street. We also need to delve into Cryengine a bit more and get our heads around it.

Kickstarting the project, this week we took a trip to London to visit the British Library and were given a fascinating tour of the building and some of it's history.

But best of all we got the chance to see some maps of London in the 1600's up-close!


We spent a great deal of time scanning and surveying the maps, gathering details about the scale, architecture and layout of the area we were interested in. Some of the maps offered us a new perspective (Literally, in some cases!) and inspired some great ideas from each of us.

It was a particularly good time for us to communicate properly and really get a plan of what we can aim to achieve with our project, tossing ideas back and forth and using the maps in front of us to clarify our points.

One point of discussion was the level of detail of the area we would make. The most sensible solution we came to was that we would prioritise detail in a sort of sphere of influence starting at Pudding Lane and working outwards. To elaborate, the streets of London are going to be the highest concentration of our efforts, as this area is the most important for telling our interpretation of the history. Lower priority would be the bridge and the tower, which we would make low detail versions made to be viewed as interesting features of the horizon.

So today, we made an effort to set ourselves individual goals for next week.
This week, the goals are primarily focused around getting ideas fleshed out into actual concepts and visualizations, which we will bring together to help establish plans for a consistent art style.

We have some generalistic ideas so far about what we expect this to be; a gloomy, depressed pre-fire London, ridden with plague and filth and a sheet of misted pollution. However, we need to illustrate them to clarify exactly what different visual approaches we have towards them. 

Lots of great concepts coming soon, so watch this space!

After being assigned the brief for this huge project, each of the Pudding Lane group were overloaded with ideas about how we could begin.

With so many different thoughts and plans buzzing about our heads, we established that the most productive use of time this week would be to each gather reference material and represent it through moodboards, concepts, 3d and written prose to lay down a scope of the ideas from us six artists, giving us a grounds to start the structured concepting stage next week.

Here's some of our visually communicated ideas we produced!


London was an incredibly dirty and plague ridden place to be in the 1600's. With this artwork, we can see how we could recreate this atmosphere through moody lighting, claustrophobic streets and lots of grimey accents.

In regards to modelling strategy, we have established that an efficient and effective way to mass produce non-landmark buildings would be to learn to build structures in a modular method, creating a variety of tier and texture options that would then theoretically mix and match in an infinite possibilty of combinations without having to build each of the many buildings uniquely.