My Evalutation of Our Station

The thougt of designing a space station was of course right up my street (as it would be anyone’s in our class!). Immediately thoughts of Tokyo and futuristic architecture sprang to mind and after watching Ghost in the Shell and looking at the prestigious architect Kisho Kurokawa, I had two basic visual themes in mind; one was a vey smooth and minimal style, similar to 2001 a space Odyssey, the other was a far more jagged and complicated design. After going with the former design scheme we divided ourselves roughly into our respective roles, mine being sound. None the less during our first “leg” of building partly due to my teammates’ absence, I got going with a little building myself before setting to work on designing the sound. The sound design was very enjoyable is it really got me thinking as it was the first time I’d ever really designed sound as opposed to creating sounds I like for artistic purposes. For this reason it was rather time consuming trying to get the desired sounds from my synths but I’m very satisfied with the result. After finishing the sound design I was surprised to see all my building moved to one side and a much more impressive structure in its place! Since the structure put my untextured work to shame I could hardly be vexed!

Overall, dispite the absence on all our parts, I feel we worked well as a team. What I think our strength lied in, was the fact that we were all open to each other’s opinions and kept our appropriately sized egos under control. In short we cooperated as opposed to going off in our own directions.

Station Snapshots

I know this is a little late but here a few snaps from the finished space station.

As you can see pretty much everything was improved upon by my teammates!

Outfits

Here are my designs for the male and female space tourist. It was just a simple job of downloading the template from the moodle and then drawing on the desired design in photoshop.

Woops, bit late but here are my drawings

Here are the various sketches I did regarding my initial ideas on the space station. They did of course preceded be showing them to my teammates and them discussing then final outcome.

My Station's Sound Design

So as my main contribution to the station has been its sound design, I thought I'd give you a run down of all its various jingles and how I made them. All sounds that I created myself I used the synths in Reason for.

1. Door sliding.

I used a short stab of white noise from my Thor synth with a quick little bit of sweeping upwards using a high pass filter. This sound compliments the movement of the door and makes the experience more immersive.

2. Ambient spaceship hum.

I got this of find sounds. Then it was just a case of looping it in Audactiy. The looped sound creates the underlying collective hum of the computers and engine working beneath the surface and makes the station environment again more obvious and immersive by playing to one's senses.

3. Techy crackle.

I used my Malstrom Graintable Synth's "flies" sample and then sped up the motion and applied an lfo varying the index. I also added a tiny bit of resonance on a high pass filter. I then looped it in audacity. This creates the impression of the ship's computers whirring beneath the surface. I've only placed this sound once in the central meeting point of the three tubes coming off from the ring as it is a more intense sound than the background hum which I've put everywhere and therefore I feel works better as a one off.

4. Hal speaks.

Again I used the Malsrtom and used a sample called "monks". I turned up the motion and pushed it up an octave to create a fast talking "throaty" sound. I then looped this in audacity. This represents our supercomputer's continuos talking to himself as he works hard at keeping the station ticking along.

5/6. Computer "R2D2 esque" jingle.

This was a very straight forward way of creating two complex sounds. So that the computer's in the control room (beneath Hal) actually sounded like computers I used a Triangle wave from my Thor and then turned up the resonance fully and the low pass filter right down. I then applied a random non synced LFO to the filter. To create the sound at a lower level I just pitched down the oscillator one octave.

7. Zero Gravtiy

I placed this at the bottom of the station. For this I used the Malstrom with a pair of "ambient Chord1" samples. I then applied an LFO that worked slowly on the pitch and applied two positive comb filters and some sinewave shaping. This sound is very bendy, bassy and wobbly and works well at the bottom of the station.

8. Space Alarm

This is just a simple sinewave, with two positive comb filters-one with a bit of resonance. Then I added an LFO with a jagged zig-zaging curve varying the volume and then pumped it through an arpegiator. This sound triggers when when walking along one of the corridors.

9. Here is Hal

This sound plays when you enter the control room. This rather complex sound I'm afraid was only a preset on the Malstrom so I won't bore you with the (in this case) rather complex set of parameters that I would've had to play around with. I then looped it in Audacity. This noise is of course meant to sound rather mystic and bizarre whilst introducing the equally mystic and bizarre supercomputer.

10. Sparkle

For this I used two "blurb flies" samples on the Malstrom with the motion turned down a tad and a little detuning. I then put a band pass filter quite high up both of them and added some resonance on one of them. I then added two LFOs both with smooth curves at lo rates; one varying the pitch the other the first filter. I placed this sound to trigger as you enter the loos as if to say "here are the loos".

11. Electrical Twang

I'm very pleased with this one. I used the Thor's white noise to make a very small stabb and then added a little reverb (small room, lo decay) and added two delay lines, one set to 20ms with a long feedback and one set to 1110 miliseconds with a short feedback. I then looped it in Audacity. This sound I placed in the corridor to give the impression of blinking lights.

12. Monolith.

This was a preset on my virtual Moog! It just had to be added to a virtual monolith. Its a bunch of detuned sinewaves with LOADS of chorus and other shenanigans in the modulation Matrix.

13/14. Mechanical Arms High and Low.

I sampled a tune of mine that has snippets of mechanical arms. I then chopped it up and edited it first in Re-Cycle and then played around with it once in the Dr-Rex player. To create the higher pitched one I just pitched one up an octave and then looped them both and placed them in the same part of the space station to give the impression of "working beneath the surface".

15. Metal Clash

I took a metal hit sample and then added some reverb and a little delay. This triggers when walking in the corridor and provides a little "metallic atmosphere".

16. Drone

This was just a simple case of looping a droneing sample I had and adding a tiny bit of distortion from my scream 4 effects unit. I placed this on another corridor to give more of a steady feel to the whirr of the engine.

My Building Conribution

Although after allocating our various roles we decided that I wasn't going to be doing any building or texturing (sound would be my area) I decided to get going with the building on my own as both my teammates were absent. Surrounding are photos of the central command centre-complete with pyramid shaped "hal" esque super computer, Zero gravity combat area, cabin, mechanical grabbing arm and hover chair. My plan was to create a little more touch it up a bit and then give to my teammate for texturing. All these creations however my teammates decided they could improve on and thus none of them are in the final model. And no I'm not complaining as what they've done is a lot nicer than what's above! Also there is the cargo pod (bottom right) which is a keeper. That as you can see is to be textured by Dave.

My Banana

After playing around with the rather clunky way of modeling in Second Life I was rather (and quite surprisingly) pleased to get back to Maya. After modeling a banana using an imported image of one from Google images as a guide I set to work creating a texture for the banana. This entailed opening the banana image in photoshop and then smudging over the edges to ensure that the texture would cover all areas of the banana. I then went back to Maya, opened up the hypershade and projected the photoshopped image onto the banana and then baked the texture. I then opened up Second Life and imported both the sculptie map and texture and applied it to a sculpted prim.

I think I might start gaming again...

Up until the point I played this game I had for a wile been an ex-gamer as after a spell of addiction I felt there was little point in indulging in mindless entertainment. After playing Bioshock 2 however I rethought my stance on gaming and what I so easily dubbed it.

For me there are two main reasons why this game this far from the brain rotting virtual crack I used to indulge in back in the day. These reasons are the same reasons why people will happily spend hours watching films and deem them "mind expanding"

The prequel to this game won a BAFTA for its sound design and although I've never played the prequel I'm sure this game's noises are just as sublime if not more. Round every corner there are carefully crafted ambient sounds as well as numerous snippets which form an integral part of the story. The sound even goes as far as to guiding you on your quest by hinting at which path to take next or what to interact with.

Secondly, at the core of this game is an malleable story-line that requires the player to make a variety of decisions. Having only played the first level I can't comment on Bioshock 2 but if the prequel is anything to go by a plot full twists, turns and ultimately the realisation that one has been deceived into acting amorally, make the player question their actions and ethics. Surly it's normally only films and books that make us do this?

Scripting!

This was a session that I was eager to sink my teeth into yet equally eager to never bother with again! Just like complicated Mathematics or breakdancing scripting is something that I respect hugely and would love to be able to do well yet it's actual execution still gets on my tits and sometime makes me wonder why bother; just for record, no I don't do Maths any more and yes I can breakdance a little.

We tackled two basic scripts. We first learnt how to make objects rotate on an axis. Although at the time I was slightly frustrated with it all (I'm dyslexic and copying from a projector is kryptonite to me) I managed to finally bash in the correct code into the object contents box. Unfortunately I gave the wrong value to the wrong axis and thus my helicopter blade turns on the x axis not the y axis and looks a bit weird. If you look closely at the photo you'll see my avatar's helicopter propeller is at a bizarre angle. I guess I should change it when I have a moment.

Then we tackled a script designed to prompt textures to move and thus allowing for the creation of moving water. We created a simple cube and applied a water texture to it. Then we opened up the content editor and bashed in another script to govern the movement of the texture over the cube. Having saved the script to the texture, the texture began to move across the surface of the cube. Firstly though the texture went the wrong way. What to do ahh!!! I was bamboozled! Do need to play around with the script? "No" my tutor calmly told me, I just need to rotate the texture!

Here are my two moodboards for the space station design. They in my eyes show two very different design approaches.

The board on the left has a very spherical and symmetrical feel to it whilst the board on right is meant to feel disjointed and complicated.

Kisho Kurokawa (Furnishings)

Back to our old friend Kisho again for a look at his small selection of furnishings . They stay true to his design principles by being very precise and detailed whilst being honest and not trying to cover up the materials used to make them.

I like their clean cut minimal feel but on a second glance I don't believe that designs like these would really be at home on a space station. They feel too brittle and fragile as well as seeming to stylish and austere. They don't really seem capable of being either something one would want to relax with after a trying day at the station nor something than may not be comfy but would at least save space and money. After seeing a photo of what I'm about to blog about next, I realised what these furnishings were lacking.

In My Shell

After starting out with looking a Japanese pods and architecture I felt that seeing a futuristic anime would give me another source of influence for futuristic design. The very popular Ghost in the Shell had been on my to see list for some time so I really had no excuse.

Many of the interiors were quite similar to those of Kurokawa; simple and "blocky". What really jumped out at me though were the costumes that the police wore. They were nicely padded and not to ostentatious. The bullet proof vests the policemen wear shown in the photo at the bottom are the lines I'm thinking along regarding the design for uniforms.

What also caught my eye were the scenes involving the exposure of robot's innards and other various situations where amorphous masses of wires shown to be spewing out. Images such as the one below of only the Robot's torso with wires protruding beneath are a beautifully chaotic juxtaposition of evidence of the complicated work involved in creating the wide array electronic contraptions, with the simple design that is placed over these structures in order to tidy it up.

In My Element

It was quite nice to learn that our friend Mr Kurokawa was designed some of the set for the legendary Sci-Fi movie The Fifth Element. This scene involves Korben finding Lee Lou in the "Autowash". Such a device has given me a little inspiration for the design of washing facilities.

In true Kuokawa style space can be saved by having the shower area contained within its own pod, which at the touch of a button slides away to make room for the platform to descend into its own drying area.

Yes I know that doesn't sound great in words, pictures will be a lot better at explaining.

Watch this space...

Kisho Kurokawa

Kisho Kurokawa co-founded the Metabolist movement which focused on the avant-garde rethinking of Asian architectural styles. He had a number of strong themes present within his work such as;

Impermanence, thanks to years of bombing and natural disasters,

attention to detail,

the honest showing of the raw materials used,

and the influence of other cultures whilst carefully preserving Japan's.

This image to the left is of the interior of National Art centre in Tokyo. The holiday home below however combines the interior of a traditional Japanese tea house his own modern design. This capsule design was the exact design used for the pods on the Nakagin capsule tower.

The building above is a wing of

Sony's Osaka headquarters. The

manner in which it uses one long

central cylinder with capsules

protruding from it exemplifies the

kind of design ideas I've been

considering for arranging the living

space.

The photos below are interior views of the Nakagin capsule tower (exterior photos shown on the right and above). They expand somewhat from the more claustrophobic and simple capsule hotel I blogged about earlier. Never the less they are still coincidently very similar looking to the 2001 a Space Odyssey set.

The feel of simplicity and ergonomic efficiency seems to be a common theme within modern and certainly futuristic design.