Self Set Summer Project 1 ~ Joker’s Hideout [Post 1]

I absolutely love Batman, the films are some of my top favourites (except the George Clooney one, but that is entertaining in its own way), the Arkham Asylum, Arkham City and Lego Batman games are amazing, and I still love watching the old cartoon series and Adam West Batman series. So I decided that as a project to do over the summer, I would design and make my own playable level building that would fit in the Batman universe. I think that I will use the dark, dingy style that is in the most recent films and games, with possible hints back to the Tim Burton style in the late 80s/early 90s Batman films.

This is a more stylised project so I’m hoping that it will reflect my creativity and ability to keep to a theme, I will be using 3D Studio Max 2013, Photoshop CS2, and the Unreal Development Kit. 

I’m giving myself 5 weeks for this project, I will create all of my own concept designs, layouts, assets, textures, and put it all in UDK myself. My final “hand in” date will be Monday 8^th July and I will be using my blog as a design document. I have one holiday booked in this time, between 17^th and 20^th June, but that is my only expected distraction.

I had the idea to make an overly Americanised sweet factory, sort of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory-esque, but as a hideout for the villains Joker and Harley Quinn. A lot of Joker’s hideouts are set in abandoned theme parks and chemical factories, I found some concept drawings of a possible hideout made from a sweet factory in The Batman Vault book (Robert Greenberger, Matthew Manning). But there were only a few basic drawings, and they were used for the cartoon series Batman Beyond which from my memory didn’t show a lot of detail in Joker’s hideout. I may use these concept sketches as a starting point, the outside drawing was used in the cartoon, but was changed quite a bit.

After doing a bit of research I found that a lot of sweet factories have large machinery with big metal tubes and conveyor belts leading into large ovens or metal vats. There are production lines of workers making, decorating and wrapping individual sweets. A lot of the results of my search ended up being sweet shops rather than factories, so I think I will need to include a shop at the front of the factory.