Black Death Britannia - Negotiated Studies One: Overview

Overall, I am fairly pleased with how this project turned out and with my contribution, although i do think it could have gone a lot smoother and could have been more impressive had we had better time management.

In terms of working in a group this project was very fun and was a great chance to experience working in a group of people with contrasting ideas. Not only did this help us to evaluate our ideas and allow us to get a second opinion on them, but it also helped us to refine them into something we all liked and were happy with.
I also liked that the work was split fairly evenly so that we could each play to our strengths and produce the best work possible.

However, working in a group also had it's fair share of hardships such as arguing over ideas and a lack of organisation. Although arguing for your ideas is a good thing as it shows you care what is being put into a game, it was a struggle when almost every idea, even minor details, were being shot down and scrutinised. Also having split the work load into different sections meant that we were left to our own devices most often, with few chances to give feedback and motivate each other but many chances to procrastinate. We did manage to get past the arguing though and eventually we were all on the same page with our ideas, and near the end of the project we did start showing each other our work and motivating each other to do work.

My two fields of work were costume design and story. Although initially I was much more interested in costume design, I did start to loose interest in the topic as it became clear that the majority of the men's costumes were simply suits, or waistcoat variations. I did have a lot of fun with the female costume design though, although I created these designs very quickly and was only left with the men's designs which left me fairly uninspired.

It wasn't until I started to write the story that i really started to enjoy the project. I found creating the character biographies much more interesting and rewarding when compared with the costume designs and the creative freedom when coming up with the main story felt great. I think you can tell from my written work that i was enjoying myself a lot, but by the time i had started to write the character bios, the project was already nearing the deadline and although i managed to finish all the biographies and story, the costume design fell short. I've never been so proud of something yet so embarrassed at the same time. I know my costume designs are far weaker than my story and I am annoyed that i let myself become unmotivated and lazy. I do like some of the designs, particularly Odette and Virginia's designs, but i think my story design is far stronger and really outshines my actual artwork.

If i were to do this project again i would definitely try to put more effort in and manage my time better. I would have aimed for turnarounds of each character with full colour costume designs as well as the detailed biographies. I think I would also now be able to pick my battles better when it comes to arguing for your ideas as looking back, a lot of what we fought about ended up being either left out or unnecessary. I would definitely work in a group again as the experience and ideas that came out of it were very helpful and creative but perhaps in future, tweaking how we worked and arranging weekly meeting where we showed each other our progress would be a good idea.

The Davenports and Van Herks

 As Jonathan and Josephine Davenport die relatively early on, I didn't give them personal costumes as they can easily be put in any of the costumes i drew whilst researching the eras. So instead here is their bio.

The Van Herks at least got some simple designs, but again as they were not major characters their designs were left and more attention was paid to their bio and the other characters.

Dr. Rivers, Winston and Sister Joy

There were three characters i didn't manage to focus on too much so sadly there is only their initial concept sketches. However, each character did receive a full biography.

Dr. Rivers was one of the first characters to be created but because our group simply saw him as the doctor and assumed his story was interesting enough, he was sidelined for the majority of the project. It was only when the end of our project was in sight that I realised how under-developed the character was. To counteract this I tried to give him a more interesting back story that showed that Rivers had a lot more history than a standard doctor.

Winston Cobblebottom

Regrettably, Winston Cobblebottom is the most under-developed character in the project. Due to disagreements on whether the character should even be in the game I was reluctant to work on him as i didn't find him very inspiring. Instead, Bas did some concept art for him and after that progress for Winston came to a halt. I did write him a biography and attempted to make the character somewhat interesting but i found it very hard to muster any interest in him. I would have preferred to have made Henry Van Herk a playable character for two reasons: because I felt Henry was a much more dynamic and interesting character and also because it would balance the age of the playable characters, since three of the four male characters are over the age of thirty. However, as time was running out Winston was allowed to stay, although if the project were to have continued, I would have liked to have scrapped the character entirely.

Sister Joy

Sister Joy was a very late entry to the character roster, being created after the simple idea of a nun with a gun which we all thought sounded cool, and since our whole project was conceived from a 'cool idea', she was added to the game and replaced the rather dull character of Adelaide Davenport, the grandmother of Odette and Edward. Adelaide is still a character, but a background character that is unseen and only referred to in the game as she is the Davenport grandmother that lives in a different city to the rest of her family. I would have loved to have thought up Sister Joy at an earlier stage as i think she had a lot of potential and could have been one of the most iconic characters. But sadly poor timing meant that Sister Joy was never to be as developed as the majority of the characters.

Odette Davenport

Odette was another character I designed very early on from the first of my sketches, and apart from some adjustments and added details she wasn't altered much because I was so happy with how she turned out.

This is page also features the one design of Queen Vicky and her zeppelin

Edward Davenport

The costume on the bottom far left was the final design

Edward Davenport was thought up fairly early on in the project but wasn't actually developed until the later stages as we didn't feel he needed much development and we were happy with our ideas about the character. I refined these ideas and added in his romance with Grace and his attitude toward his parents and upper class society in general into his biography.

Charlie Davenport

Charlie Davenport.

Charles 'Charlie' Davenport was known as 'The Uncle' for a while whilst Virginia, Odette and Grace were being created but when Virginia (who was at that point known as 'The Whore') seemed unconnected to the other survivors, I came up with the idea of marrying her into the family. To do this we needed a black sheep type character and the Uncle fit the bill perfectly. Together with my two teammates we threw around ideas of what Charlie would be like and we eventually decided on him owning a flying circus that travelled around America and eventually came back to England to visit.

Initial concepts of Charlie with Virginia

Wanting Charlie to be a bit eccentric I designed some bright and colourful waistcoats for him to wear, we eventually decided on Waistcoat #2.

Concepts of the costume and snake tattoo that was also decided on

Grace Mills

Grace Mills was another character that was created at the beginning of the project as we wanted some of the survivors to represent the staff and lower classes to cause some friction with the upper class Davenport family. I wanted Grace to be the perfect maid before the outbreak, but i also wanted her to be an integral member of the group afterwards and someone who would stand up to her former employers when it came to her own survival. Later on I also came up with the idea of Grace and Edward having feelings for each other, which could create a little forbidden love story amongst the horror of the outbreak. I included all this in the bio i wrote for her.