Capstone Project - Cave Research: Creswell Crags
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| Creswell Crags Spring Video - https://youtu.be/lqVnoSyu8Ww?si=l3SGx2e9-MqJ7isR |
https://www.creswell-crags.org.uk/virtual-tour#church-hole
To gather some more visual research and inspiration for this project I took a trip out to Creswell Crags, a Neolithic settlement site not far from where I live. I've been a few times in the past and I wanted to see if I could book onto a tour into the robin hood cave to look at how cavepeople would have lived however the tours were not running when I visited sadly. I did manage to look around the museum and I also took a walk around the crags themselves. Above is a link the virtual tour of another of Creswell Crag's caves, the Church hole, which features some cave paintings. It is my hope that actually going to look at some caves that Neanderthals lived in will help me come up with some ideas for how the caves within my game will actually look. As much as I would like them to be quite exaggerated I think retaining some element of realism will help the overall theming of the game be more apparent.
Photos I took -
I made sure to take a lot of photos while looking around, these artefacts are all things that were found at Creswell Crags, its really interesting to see what kind of animals used to live in this area. I had no idea that we once had hyena, hippos, rhinos and lions in this country, by the looks of it hyena were quite common to be seen, with the top left image showing a baby hyena skeleton that was found in one of the caves.
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| Hyena skeleton, mammoth jaw, Rhino bones, Bison skull, more rhino bones, hyena skull and a partially digested bison bone. |
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| Bear skull, Hyena jaw, Wolf bone, Lemming jaw, Arctic fox jaw, wild horse jaw, amber, sewing needles, Horse carving, flint handaxe. |
Here are some more examples of bones and tools.
These next few images are taken from my walk around the crags, It was pretty misty when I went and quite muddy so I couldn't go right the way up to some of these caves for safety reasons but I'm honestly quite glad I came at this time of year. With the colder weather and quieter paths it gave a really peaceful vibe to the whole place, and very fitting for an ice age setting [just a shame there wasn't any snow]. The crags are very impressive, the caves themselves being on multiple layers in the rock and with a large central lake it really did feel adjacent to a small village. In some of the caves shown, especially the church hole, some of the holes in the side of the main cavern act like windows, really giving the place a more homely feel.
All of the caves are built into the side of the gorge, they're fairly accessible with all of the entrances facing the central lake. It really feels like this place would have been a perfect place for Neanderthal tribes to have settled, with an easily accessible fresh water source, miles of woodland surrounding them and open pastures to hunt for food, it seems they had everything right on their doorstep.
These three caves in the first image were spaced almost perfectly apart from one another, it was very funny to me that it literally looked like a small housing estate. I thought it was amusing to think about cavemen having neighbours.
This is when the fog started coming in, it was quite atmospheric. I was told by the people at the visitor centre that this time of year is when a lot of bats hibernate in the caves, hence why some of the caves are shut off from tours. Apparently as well as the area being of significant historical interest, it's also home to a lot of rare species of plants and animals. This isnt necessarily linked to my project, but I thought it was an interesting piece of information nevertheless.
I think this cave is the Robin Hood cave, in which they do tours in. If the weather warms up a bit and I have time before this project is due in, I might see if I can come back and do that tour, it looked very interesting just looking through the bars.
Heres a better look of the layout of the crags themselves.
Some more interesting areas of the site and some replica artefacts in the gift store. Also the gingerbread Neanderthal I bought from the café which was very good :).
I really enjoyed taking this trip out and I feel a bit more inspired especially when it comes to designing some caves for my game. I also spoke to the staff a bit about the history of the crags which led onto the discussion of what my project is, One of the staff members was very pleased that I was choosing to depict cavemen in a kinder light that what they have been described as for so long, especially the fact that my game revolves around hunting, gathering, and working in a community. Although my game has a very silly and somewhat inaccurate nature, i did want my depictions of cavepeople to be more than the "knuckle dragging idiots" (in the words of the information desk worker) that the media has portrayed them as being for so long.
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| Antler speartip, Creswell and cheddar points, Mammoth teeth, assorted flint offcuts, handaxes, more damaged hippo teeth, hyena taxidermy, info on hippos, Rhino bones? [i think?] |
These next few images are taken from my walk around the crags, It was pretty misty when I went and quite muddy so I couldn't go right the way up to some of these caves for safety reasons but I'm honestly quite glad I came at this time of year. With the colder weather and quieter paths it gave a really peaceful vibe to the whole place, and very fitting for an ice age setting [just a shame there wasn't any snow]. The crags are very impressive, the caves themselves being on multiple layers in the rock and with a large central lake it really did feel adjacent to a small village. In some of the caves shown, especially the church hole, some of the holes in the side of the main cavern act like windows, really giving the place a more homely feel.
Observational sketches -
While I was there, I drew a couple of the things that caught my interest. I would have liked to have drawn more but there was also a school trip on at the time I was there so it was very busy in the visitor center. Of these sketches I would say the cave sketch was very useful to look into the organic forms that make up the overall look of the cave, This is the church hole, the one with the three smaller cave entrances that look a bit like the windows of a church.
I really enjoyed taking this trip out and I feel a bit more inspired especially when it comes to designing some caves for my game. I also spoke to the staff a bit about the history of the crags which led onto the discussion of what my project is, One of the staff members was very pleased that I was choosing to depict cavemen in a kinder light that what they have been described as for so long, especially the fact that my game revolves around hunting, gathering, and working in a community. Although my game has a very silly and somewhat inaccurate nature, i did want my depictions of cavepeople to be more than the "knuckle dragging idiots" (in the words of the information desk worker) that the media has portrayed them as being for so long.
Trello -
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/112wXJW27lFJjkPjQHZk7fCMT7VPCanDHE-cVP0tGDUM/edit?usp=sharing
With this inspiration I would like to begin designing some ideas for caves, I think I will focus on one biome at a time [jungle, beach, ice and plains] to build up unique visual language for each of the locations. On my Gantt chart I should be starting those after I have all my character concepts complete. As there are only 4 designs to do this should take much less time than my other assets, however I will need to find a way to implement my designs into the UI of the player boards. I will refer back to this post when coming up with ideas to keep my designs somewhat grounded in reality. I am very glad I took this trip and I might come back again to hopefully go on one of those tours :) if I do, I will add on any photos and notes to the end of this blog post.
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