Period Elements

This project was a chance for us to expand on our research skills as we were told to choose a time period. In my case, I chose medieval (1066-1500), and with that, we had to design a 3-walled living space based form that time period. This means we had to research a vast amount of factors to build up the necessary knowledge to design an accurate and period-correct space

I created a few research pages to lay out specific characteristics of the medieval age. These include standard info such as notable events and kings of that age. I also looked into farming as it gave me a good idea of what materials were available through farming. I finally looked at medieval architecture and how it developed through the ages, and how crusades affected the style of the buildings

Moodboard

these 4 paintings are my watercolour visuals. the aim of these was to show what the hall would look like in colour and detail

these are my initial sketches. I did these to both visualise my ideas and just get them onto paper. my idea was to design a hall that would be situated under a castle. because of this I wanted to include rocks at the end of the hall where the arches to show and make it feel like it has been built into rock.

i also played around with furniture design as whalst doing my research I found that they have a certain style for tables in halls. so using that I designed my own.

This is the white card model that I created in sketch-up. I have included the rock at the end of the hall to reiterate the idea that it is under a castle looking out to the landscape. At this point, I concluded that because of the complexity of a vaulted ceiling. It would most likely have to be a green screen. because of this, I only included the start of the vaultings, and the rest above would be a green screen.

this is the full textured model of my design. this version of the SketchUp is meant to look as if it were put into a studio to be shot in. it includes the green screen on the ceiling and at the end of the hall. I have also tried my best to include the most accurate textures to make it feel as real as possible

Technical drawing created in Layout.

Reflection

As projects go, this period elements project was quite fun. Because of the given freedom of choosing our own time period and living space to design, it felt like we had a lot more creative freedom than in other projects. The aim of this project was to introduce us and build up our research skills as in the industry, they will be essential, especially for period films. Looking for accurate information and images was definitely the hardest part. This is because the medieval age was such a long time ago. Most evidence of how they created furniture and certain design choices is long gone. So I had to do a bit of digging to find relevant and logical information.

there are some parts of this project that I felt I could of done better. First is the lack of set dressing in my design. the space and structural parts of the set are there, but I feel that there could of been a lot more dressing in the form of wooden boxes, tapestries and other medieval decorations. The addition of this would drastically improve the look and feel of the set as a whole and create a much more believable and realistic design.

Overall, I found this project quite successful as I have expanded my knowledge of both research skills and the medieval age, which hopefully will become useful later in life.