For our project our team has produced an animation based on the "Ring around the Rosy" rhyme. When looking contextually through the history of the story, we decided to represent the rhyme through the times of the Black Death, when the rhyme was born. Throughout the project I have contributed evenly if not more than others towards committing to a high quality final product. From when the team was discussing which part each person was doing, I was assigned to model the street and environmental factors.

 

I was able to finish modelling these assets within the first deadline set as a team, leaving me with lots of spare time. After modelling, texturing and adding cameras to the scene I added some finishing touches and began to help others with their work. My contribution to the team was not only doing my part, but it was helping others who found difficulties. This report will convey the outcome from my own individual efforts.

After researching on houses and streets from the time in which the Black Death was around, I was able to construct and present a similar image with my own model. When creating the street I wanted a little variation in the houses and so I created two different types. 

The image shows the models in the street without any texturing. Additionally, this conveys how effective the texturing is, presented later in these images.

To create the street, I built 2 types of houses and doublicated them to make a row, editing some to make them appear unique. I then added the exterior detail such as the crosses and the entrances.

I have created a row of houses which relate to the background history of the ryhme, where I have improved realism through using File textures and bumpmapping. Adding dirty walls and bumpy bricks gives a sense of bad hygiene and realism. I have also added finer detail to the houses by adding cracks in the window, adding decoration on the windows and also by using lamp lights. As seen in the image, I also created the red crosses on the door and animated them so that they slowly faded onto certain doors in the street. Adding these crosses represents the nursery ryhme from when the doctor used to draw crosses on the infected's door.

When I was creating the church I also committed to researching the types of churches that were around through the time of the nursery rhyme. In this case, churches were fairly small with lots of gravestones due to the high death toll of the plague. When creating the church I have added finer detail to the church such as decorative components, stain glass windows and crosses. I added these to make the church look interesting, realistic and more detailed.  

The roses were created simply for the scene with the girls dancing in which I assisted in animating. Making the roses was fairly simple, yet they proved effective in representing the rhyme. Adding them into a circle gave context to "ring around the rosy". The roses I created are made up of different shapes that have all been extruded and textured to create a thorny looking rose.

After creating the entirety of the street I had to also light the scene too. To do this I thought of a creative and effective way of doing so, using lamps. I firstly created the lamps by extruding from a square shape and then using smooth tools and other editing tools to make the basic shape. I then changed the textures, added transparency to the middle and added lights inside of the lamp, emitting a fiery light to the scene. Not only does this light the scene but it emphasises the bump mapping used on the walls, floors and doors, additionally adding more detail to the houses.

 

Although the lamps emit good light, they were only used for the night scene in order to give a night time lighting effect that wasn’t too bright or at least bright enough to be day. Due to this, I had to also add more lights for the day scene in order to capture the whole environment. 

Although I was not assigned to create this, I created it to help out with the workload of a struggling team member. I created this for the scene in which dead bodies are seen laying on the cart when the plague strikes. This relates to historical context of the rhyme where the doctor used to shout "bring out your dead" and place them onto a body cart. When texturing the cart I also added bump mapping in order to increase the detail shown.

This an image of the finished product. Every part of this scene was a personal challenge that pushed my boundaries of 3D modelling and through this, I learnt alot of key skills in working with a team and in 3D modelling.

Overall I have contributed greatly towards the final animation, where I have created various assets for the project covering all different aspects of Maya such as modelling, texturing, lighting, cameras and animating. When regarding the team, I have worked particularly well with some members of the team and was able to work effectively with shared knowledge. Primarily, I feel that I have contributed to a large amount of modelling, texturing and lighting when looking through the animation. Through high spirit and lots of effort, as a team we were able to construct what i believe to be a highly contextual representation of Ring around the Rosy within high quality standards.