Ward Ship Ideation:
For the environment piece, I have decided to create a representation for what the Forge Father's Ward Ship would look like, a massive, city-like structure that acts to be a mobile home for thousands of individual Forge Fathers. This ship is the primary location in which the game is set, the "Aegnar" Ward Ship that the Forge Father character controls a part of and the Veer-Myn character is invading. This idea bears strong inspiration from Crying Suns (Alt Shift 2019), in which the ships shown are 3D assets more complex than the otherwise pixelated character and environment designs.
These ships are a source of inspiration due a degree of similarity they have to the Ward Ship. Though not necessarily sharing the same design language, they are massive and city-like in scale, housing a robust crew. In Crying Suns (Alt Shift 2019), art showing the battleships in full scale also shows how big typical fighter ships are in comparison. In the image seen below, the "Imperator", a small formation of fighter ships can be seen beside it. Each fighter ship is piloted by a small crew, and this helps to sell the scale of the larger battleship, the scale of which might otherwise seem difficult to grasp.
The Imperator Ship, as well as several small fighters (Alt Shift 2019).
As such, when developing my scene, the "street furniture" may be several smaller ships, perhaps fighters, mining vessels or refinery ships. This could help to improve the sense of scale. Ward Ships, as detailed in the lore, cannot land on planets (Mantic Games 2016) due to the immensity of their scale: they hang in orbit and dispense smaller ships, shuttles and dropships, to the planet they hang over. As this means that the Ward Ship may be in space, an environment largely without scale, the presence of the smaller ships could help to solidify the immensity of the vessel.
As such, I may also include a planet in the scene of the piece, which sits under the Ward Ship. This would help in pushing forward the scale of the ship, as well as potentially making the surrounding environment more interesting to look at. In my design process I will explore how I may utilise this in the scene: as it and the Ward Ship could be considered one "body", I may - when designing the ships - consider the planet a part of the Ward Ship's design and examine how its shape and prominence would impact the scene on whole. Alternatively, I may design it separately and examine how its inclusion as a major scene element influences the composition through a series of thumbnails sketches.
The below images serve to be visual inspiration for as to how I may place the element of the planet in the scene.
I have also looked in to the artwork of Neil Blevins, who has created a series of illustrations describing science fiction megastructures, hypothetical drawings including Dyson Spheres, Ringworlds and gas giant refineries. Again, I found a similarity between his work and that which I wish to produce, that being the description of immense mechanical structures that inhabit the relatively scale-devoid environment of space. Blevins' illustrations excel at providing a sense of enormity to the structures he has created, this effect largely accomplished by comparing the scale of the artificial megastructure in question to the scale of other elements of the scene, such as a planet or series of ships. This helps to create a hierarchy of scale that enforces the enormity of the objects in question.
A series of "Megastructure" illustrations created by Neil Blevins.
I have also considered how the Ward Ship may look in general, stylistic terms, creating another mood board showing potential inspirations for the design. As this is a Forge Father invention, I will likely base the overall patterning and design language off the pre-existing Forge Father vehicles, with shapes then altered to fit its intended environment and function. Though Ward Ships are armed, the individual turrets and battlements may be swallowed in the immensity of its form, giving the ship a more defensive look, perhaps more akin to the torsos of the mech units and the chassis of the vehicles stripped of weapons. In line with their other vehicles, the Ward Ship will likely be symmetrical in nature with detailing and decoration sectioned to specific plates, otherwise being sparse.
With this ideation done, I have came up with ideas for one "hero building" and three pieces of "street furniture". They are as follows:
Hero Building: Aegnar Ward Ship.
Street Furniture: Planet, Asteroid, Mining Ship.
This is relevant to my game and genre because, over the course of the game, the player would need to harvest resources to keep the Ward Ship afloat from the Veer-Myn invasion. Some of this resource collection would be in the form of asteroid mining, which could prove to be a unique danger to an ill-prepared crew. This environment art will show one such scene, with the Ward Ship in orbit over a distant and barren planet surrounded by a debris field of asteroids. A crew of Asteroid Mining Vessels, much smaller than the Ward Ship, will be seen elsewhere in the scene, both flying and breaking up the asteroids they seek to gian resources from.
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