With the conclusion of my UI project last week I decided to return to an environment brief for my final project for the term. While I may be returning to more familiar territory I've been keen since probably arriving back at having a go at a stylized project which will make this my first on the course. So still a new area for me which is exciting and I think out of all three of my projects this is the one that I'm most unsure of what the outcome will be. The brief itself is rather simple, essentially to design the space behind a gateway. The gate itself is a round Japenese styled glorified hole in the wall and so immediately I've been very drawn to the idea of a zen garden or shrine-esque space.
Not a hugely original idea I know but I'm not going to anchor myself to closely to a Japanese aesthetic or environment rather taking elements from a variety of sources and building it into my environment. I'm also in the mind to keep it as small and simple as possible A. to not go down the route of the rooftop and trying to build something too ambitious and B. to focus on the execution of the style. To quote Mike, small but perfectly formed. Working on the last two projects I've formulated a good idea of what I want to do in terms of subject and style so with Monday I was able to hit the ground running with it quickly blocking out a space and getting it into Unreal.
So you can see what I mean by keeping the space simple, there's really only one hero asset and accompanying that are the walls, gate, rocks and the ground mesh. As I've concepted the skybox has gotten a lot more complicated and you can see below how I want to incorporate, ideally, the northern lights to hopefully push the setting of the garden. It also adds an accent colour to the palette I'm toying with for the scene. The colour palette is something that will be key for this project and for an environment I've never thought about or executed such a limited and designed palette as I'm hoping to do. It's a whole new way of approaching colour in a scene for me in a way I feel is much more akin to painting. So it'll be interesting to see how I execute the palette in the final environment. I really like the idea of a very cold palette, lots of desaturated blues and violets contrasting with the central flame, the vibrant orange and warmth which will be limited to the that single asset and then as an accent as I said before bringing in the bright blue/greens of the northern lights.
The style I'm going for is very simplistic, Ralph McQuarrie is perhaps the biggest influencing, you can see an example above, although I've been dragging influences from across the board, Japanese wood prints alongside more contemporary artists. Rather then strictly trying to emulate a certain style or artist I'm wanting to keep these as inspiration and draw my own style from these and grow that over the course of the project .
I've also started to concept various assets you can see the central brazier and some rocks and I feel I've found my feet pretty quickly with these. Like I said stylisation is a pretty new subject for me and it's one I'm very conscious is easy to fall into the trap of using it as a crutch for bad design, or modelling, texturing whatever. However I feel with my big focus on colour, style and form from the beginning that and a clear idea of what I want to produce my art direction is hopefully coming across competently. People seem to like it at the evry least and in all honesty I'm having a blast with it, I mean after three years of muh gritty realism it's a huge breath of fresh air.
I've also had a little bit of a level up this week too, I was talking to Lewis as I was beginning my concepts and anyway the jist is I was asking about how to paint highlights etc more competently anyway Lewis pushed me to one side and revealed a whole new level of painting goodness utilising colour doges and burns for painting shadows and highlights. I mean it all clicked. So for perhaps the first time I painted something not only am I really happy with, not only did it take a short(ish) period of time and not only does the style feel solid but I'm actually, as embarrassed as I kinda feel about being so, super proud of my brazier concept.
So I've a new found confidence in my painting abilities and over next week I'll probably be jumping in and out of Photoshop a lot painting textures, concepts, you name it. My first step for next week is getting out a first pass for the rocks as I have for the walls and brazier. Then I guess for Wednesday maybe push out a more refined skybox, vista meshes and ground mesh. From the feedback I've had from the tutors I'm conscious that I can overly over complicate this and go over budget, initially my desire was to have it snow covered but after discussing it with Mike who basically said it could take up a lot of time and while eat a lot of budget resources to probably leave that for after hand-in. Mike also mentioned that the scene could require more than a single focal point, three was the number that seems to be the best t am for so I'll need to work out what the other major assets are going to be, maybe foliage or more interesting rock formations. Again the colour palette has been brought up as being perhaps the major element of the whole environment especially for selling the art direction itself. The final element that was discussed was the scenes lighting and I'll admit I actually haven't given it any real thought between the central flame and northern lights I don't have too clear an idea over the overall lighting for the space so that'll be something to mull over the start of the week and once I have more refined meshes in do a couple paintovers to work out what I'm gonna do for it. I think this two will be the biggest challenge, the lighting and colour palette which will no doubt be the two elements that will ultimately decide the success of this project. One of these times I should make it it easy for myself.
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