This week I began work on my first attempt for the cube world project, orienting my original idea around a swamp and a witch's hut for narrative purposes. This gives me a lot of freedom for creating a interesting narrative for my project, and can follow many other artists impressions for inspiration.
Moodboard:
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I
collected the images either based on isometric grids or witch huts to create a mood
board of all my initial ideas. I knew I wanted something with water as well as
foliage, so I also collected images of the two together in instances such as
swamps and overgrown temples.
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This ensured
I had a good variety of imagery to decide what kind of foliage to choose and
experiment with, and I also could see how water was usually portrayed in
isometric images with hard cut edges that go to the void.
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I was
more drawn to images that had a mystical appearance, such a strong ambient
lighting effects and a colour scheme of twilight colours. I had taken an original
piece by Marby Kwong called “Suncrest” that I really like the shape of in order
to change the colours, of which two schemes came out:
o A purple and blue scheme
o A green and yellow scheme
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Also included
in this mood board was a checklist of features I would want to include, such as
a lot of wooden props and wildlife to ensure the scene had imperfections and
life to it, as well as features like a crooked chimney and stilts I really
enjoyed in the Suncrest reference and was common in other witch huts.
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| Moodboard for the original concept creation |
More Specific Moodboard:
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I wanted to
expand my colour adjustments into their own image as this was a crucial step of
the process for me. I used basic colour adjustment layers in order to convert
the colours of the original into something that resonated more of a witch theme
to me, as it looked very secluded and almost apocalyptic in colour to me
originally.
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The green
colour adjustment was my first attempt, and it created a much murkier
atmosphere that was very resonant of traditional swamp aesthetic. It also
looked a lot dirtier than the original, making the hut look less like a younger
fantasy aesthetic to something like the original mood board’s hanging hut
reference I found. This aesthetic is however very common for witches and swamps,
and I thought if I pushed this it could look very basic and not provide much
visual interest in comparison.
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The
purple reference was much more exciting to me – it pushed the piece from this standard
daytime look at this hut to seeing this hut at night in twilight with a aura of
mystery that was missing from the original. The other reference I found
relating to a “voodoo magic” aesthetic also used a very similar colour scheme
with the purples and reds, with greens not actually being green but being
browns with a cold hue. This excited me most – and so I wanted to experiment
with what would happen if I combined both of my colour tests?
·
This
ultimately was a failed experiment because it left the hut looking very
detached from the surroundings – they looked like they were separate pieces
which they were to some degree. There was no cohesion because they were very
opposite colour schemes.
· I also found some references in the same Suncrest post by Kwong about the shape language she was using – and was very excited by the leftmost references for their heavy influence with trees.
Moodboard more closely detailing the colour shifts of the original moodboard
Screenshots of work:
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I started
creating a first attempt for my scene – my aim was to simply have a mostly
rendered scene by the end of the week to receive feedback on, and I hadn’t had
much practice with working in photoshop until this point on something so
plainly illustrative so I knew my first attempt would come with a host of
issues. I created a simple block out of shape language from a front and side
angle with some basic colours inspired from aspects of my original mood board.
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This seemed
like a good, basic place to begin; I was happy with the colour language too separating
the elements and was happy with the language of this stubby, pointy petrified
tree forming the centre of the scene.
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I then moved
to a basic sketch on an isometric grid, trying to mimic the shapes in the original
shape language blockout. From here, I moved to making a colour blockout to then
add details on top of.
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Starting to add colours to the shapes made in the sketch and adding a floor plane with water |
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This really
started to bring some life to the piece – however I feel like as much as I enjoy
the water and the boat and the general surrounding scenery, I would maybe
experiment with another version with a different tree and building shape as it
looks very basic and not very witchy at the moment. I will however push to get
this at least rendered, so I can practice how I might render something in this
style to later adapt in a shape redo.
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Current level of detail pass - 14/11/2020 |
· In this pass, I added the details to the water such as ripples on the surface as seen in the overgrown Japanese temple reference and the swamp reference, and I also added aspects such as fish and land shadows to add some depth to the scene (even if the fish are currently placeholder). I added a basic style of tiling that I might do a foliage pass on to roughen it up, and I did a experiment with the window to try and make it look like it was glowing and might have some nefarious cauldron boiling. That was a simple lasso and colour dodge effect, but it added a little more interest to the scene.
Conclusions:
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Opinion? My
overall opinion for the scene as it is coming together is that the theme is
strong and can be conveyed quite well, and allows for some interesting lighting
experiments that should challenge me being new to digital art, especially when
it is art in general mostly from my head in a more illustrative style. This
feels both very in and out of my comfort zone – I enjoy getting the research
and refining stages like shape and the colour schemes but find I normally
struggle with final refinements and making a scene seem interesting, which I am
trying hard to do with this small scene.
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Next
steps? My next steps may be to redesign in simple sketches ideas for the main island,
maybe keeping the tree the same and changing the building around etc as now it
seems very non-witchy. I will refer to the references found on my second mood
board for this, especially in the references with the waterwheel and the whole
house sitting on a tree stump. I have been warned that trees are hard to get
with isometric perspective as their canopies cover the whole scene – so I will
have to keep this in mind and stay with a petrified tree that I dress up in
things such as hanging vines to keep the swamp feel.
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I also will
make a mood board on adding more wildlife – such as researching real life
plants and animals that are associated with swamps such as frogs, fish and
dragonflies, and cattail plants, vines and lily pads to make sure my foliage is
accurate. Up until this point I haven’t used much real-life inspiration for my
fantasy swamp, so this may help greatly.
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As an
extension, I could search for inspiration for a small character or at least a
familiar to sit in the scene as this would really push the witch feel and give
a proper sense of scale.
References/links:
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”Suncrest”
by Marby Kwong - https://www.artstation.com/artwork/ybaLrn
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