Choosing
your theme
You may already
have a distinctive developing style so choosing your theme
may come easily. A theme can be something as simple as ‘Modern
Day Loft Apartment’, to something as complex as ‘Nuclear
Powered Superhero Underground Base’ the main point is
don’t just start making textures without some sort of
goal in mind. Once you have your theme in mind it will help
to guide you on your texture choices…
What time period?
Current day? Victorian? Medieval? Post Apocalyptic? etc
What would the floors be made of? What would the walls me
made of? etc.
How would it be finished? High end? Hand Made? Distressed?
Having the answers
to these and similar thematic questions will speed up the
texturing process by narrowing your scope down to just what
you need vs being distracted by limitless options.
Choosing
the Mood
How you want your
product to make people feel is a very important question to
ask yourself. What do you want the ‘Id’ of your
room to be?
Do you want them
to relax?
Do you want them to be excited?
Do you want them to be inspired?
Do you want them to be on edge?
Do you want them to be scared?
While it is not
necessarily easy to put your finger on exactly why one product
makes you ‘feel’ and another product makes you
feel nothing at all, the mood you are wanting to covey is
an important thing to be thinking about during the product
making process. Texture choices, color choices, scale, and
lighting choices will all dramatically influence a products
mood.
You will rarely
get the viewer to feel exactly what you are, as how one reacts
to a product is a very individual experience build up on their
own life experiences, the important thing is to get them to
‘feel’ something.
Personal
Deving Note: I’m very big on intent. When I’m
working on something whether for Real Life, IMVU or SL, the
emotion behind the piece, whether it is an environment, a
piece of furniture, or a tree is almost always a driving force.
While this kind of emotion driven product making will not
apply to everything you make, it will surprise you how much
life you can add to an item with just your intent. /end Keef
mumbmo jumbo, lol
Color Choices
It is very important
to come up with a color theme and stick with it. Especially
if you are making items that you expect users to be able to
later mix and match.
Whether you are
aiming for Naturals, Primaries, Vibrant, Pastels, Faded, Grey
Tones, that choice needs to be represented in every texture
you make for that line of products. Sticking to a color family,
and even a limited pallet within that family will lead to
a much more cohesive whole and more polished looking final
product line than picking stuff from here and there just because
you like it.
I hope that helped to get your mind thinking larger than the
basic make a texture box as well set the groundwork of where
we are going. Up Next week, How to Choose Meshes to derive
from!
Homework
Assignment 1a Group
Go through the
catalog and find at least 3 examples from three different
developers of finished rooms that you think seem to follow
the Design Concepts of Theme, Mood and Color Choices. (You
can open up a non derivable room in the Previewer by putting
its PID in the derive from box to fully check it out. It won’t
let you actually derive from it but you can look at it.)
(FYI there are
no wrong answers here everyone will have their own unique
experience in a room)
Theme: What do you feel is the Theme of the room from your
point of view?
Mood: How does it make you feel?
Color Choices: How do you feel its limited color choices enhance
the product?
Please share your
discoveries of some amazing room texture work here and as
a group free to discuss the examples presented.
Homework
Assignment 1b Self Study
Likewise open up
some rooms that you think are… well …. ehh. (please
do this part privately, either on you own or with a deving
buddy, we don’t want to create any bad mojo here) Now
ask why is that room not working? What would have made it
better?
Homework
Assignment 1c Self Study
Come up with at
least 3 different concept ideas clearly defining the Theme,
Mood, Color that you would use to create interesting mix and
match product lines. Then list out at least ten companion
pieces that could be made to fit that theme in a coordinated
set.