Reflective journal and research.

Research

1930's America was the time of 'The great depression', following the crash of Wall Street in 1929. More than 15 million Americans were unemployed. To begin with, America had President Herbert Hoover, but he was later replaced by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was elected in 1932. In 1937, The Hindenburg airship explode, which would be one of the significant factors of ending the use of airships as transport.  

http://www.history.com/topics/1930s

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1930s

For research, I usually contain all of the reference images into mood board.

The first mood board is just a compilation of reference images starting point of women's faces. I love the large image on the left. I also used these as reference and starting point for 1930's hair styles.

The next mood board is of planes from the 1930's era. Obviously given that I want my character to be an aviation pilot, I'm going to do research on planes. However, instead of the normal aviation planes, I want to use fighter planes and briefly at Zeppelins , I find them more interesting and I want to perhaps interoperate a Dieselpunk them into my concepts.

In addition to this, I have a mood board on airstrips, 'cause you can't have planes without airstrips. Also I would like to do an airstrip as an environment, think it'll be interesting. I also looked at how other games approached airfield within their concept art. 

The next mood board is of a 1930's photographer Bernice Abbott. I looked at her work as she has great photographs detailing the architecture of cities on 1930's America. They have also have great texture and perspective. Looking at these have giving me inspiration for one of my environments thumbnails.

I've also done research on female clothing for normal life and female aviation clothing. These give me great idea for what to do for my character and her clothing.

Lastly, I have looked at 1930's New York, as this is where I want to base my story and I want to look at the architecture of the area in that era. As well as this i looked at bar interiors from the 1930's, 1930's style and how other games approached bar interiors. The games i looked at were 'The Last of Us', 'Infamous 2' and the concept art for 'Natural Selection 2'. 

Amelia Earhart

 Amelia Earhart was an American aviation pioneer and author.
 During her aviation career, she set many records; one of which she was to be the first female aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic ocean. From her experiences, she wrote best selling book that details said experiences.

However in 1937, during an attempt to make a circumnavigation flight of the globe, her and her plane disappeared over the Pacific ocean. To which she was unfortunately to never been seen again. There are many theory into her disappearance and what happened to her. One such theory like the Crash and sink theory. There is another peculiar theory which included crabs.

I want to incorporate the adventurous, pioneering spirit of Amelia Earhart's into my own character design.

http://www.ameliaearhart.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amelia_Earhart

This is my research mood board on wilderness area of the state of New York. This give me some ideas for my environment thumbnails. 

Reflective journal - Week 1

To begin with I was going to do a male solider. However, I decided whilst i was researching and trying to attempt to do some silhouettes, i want to do a female version of the solider . Whilst researching 1930's America, i looked at some of the aviation of that era. To which i finding quite interesting. To that end, I found out there was a very fascinating female aviation pilot in the 1930's – Amelia Earhart. 

Both aviation and Amelia Earhart have inspired me for what i want my character to be like.