Industry Practice: Developing Environment Art

Environment Art Contributions

My final contributions to the environmental art of our project, in terms of direct design, was that of creating the final sketch and 3D blockout for Memory's office. This stemmed from the initial batch of thumbnail designs I created for the office, with my team choosing the ones that they believed were the most effective. As such, when developing the final sketch, I merged two of these designs together and used the perspective seen in the sketches previously used in the Alpha Build. I also created a rudimentary colour palette. 


I then created a 3D blockout based off this scene. Though this was not a perfect rendition, it served to illustrate the perspective of the scene and could be drawn over when environmental art was created. I then handed this over to Holly, the environment artist of our group.


During this time, Holly and Evie were working on Environment pieces for the game: as Holly had more to do, I offered to do the colours for several of them to split the work and speed up the process. As such, Holly sent me the line art for the schoolyard and psychology classroom scenes, which I then placed colours in. In doing so I followed the guidelines established previously, using generally darker and less saturated colours and keeping the palette largely unified and grey. I created two variations for these designs, one being less saturated than the other, and sent these for review from my team, with feedback indicating they met their vision for the game.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Industry Practice: Case Study - the art style of Don't Starve

Image
Art Style Case Study: Don't Starve Don't Starve (Klei Entertainment 2013) and Don't Starve Together (Klei Entertainment 2016) are survival games in which players command thoroughly unprepared explorers stranded in the wilderness. Over the course of in-game seasons, players gather equipment, craft items and armour, grow crops and explore the world to combat dangerous monsters and find resources in hazardous biomes. With somewhat surreal and fantastical theming, many of the monstrous creatures in the Don't Starve games are chimaeras of a sort, mixtures of two or more creatures that create unique combinations that represent specific themes or seasons in the game. For example, the "Bearger" enemy is a mixture of a Badger and a Bear, with a hulking humanoid form, bear-like claws and a badger's head. This unique combination of animals is used in Don't Starve to represent the season of autumn, with badgers and bears both being animals representative of the...
Read more

ZBrush: Transpose, Masks and Subtools

Image
Transpose  Allows for the repositioning and moving of models within ZBrush. This allows for movement, scaling and rotation. When the Transpose tool is activated, a pivot appears in the model you are moving. Thic contains arrows, axis rings and block shapes. Pulling on the arrows of the Transpose tool moves a model. Axis rings allow for rotation and the block shapes allow for scaling. These are all measured on the X, Y and Z axis.  There are also a number of options that allow for the Transpose tool to be customised. The Lock  Gear: Allows access to deformers. Pin: Pins the pivot to its current location. Locator : Centres pivot to unmasked areas of the model.  Home: Centres the pivot on the model. Circle Arrow: Reset rotation of pivot Lock: Unlocks the pivot, allowing for the pivot to be moved independent of the model. This allows for the centre of rotation to be changed,  Checkbox: Transpose multiple models at once. Masks Masks allow for areas of a ZBrush ...
Read more

3d toolkit: Zmodeler and Extract

Image
Zmodeler: Zmodeler is a brush/tool that allows for 3D modelling techniques, such as extruding and beveling, to be used atop a Zbrush Sculpt. This operates similarly to Autodesk Maya, with edges and faces able to be selected and manipulated using a variety of settings. To demonstrate the Zmodeler tool, I loaded up the default Cube project. I then, using the "Geometry" setting in the Tool menu at the right side, changed the Subdivisions of the cube to 2. This removed much of the geometry of the cube. I then used "Delete Higher" and "Delete Lower" to lock the cube into its two-subdivision state, removing any erroneous geometry. I then turned on the " Line Fill " setting, which is activated by pressing SHIFT+F . This shows the geometry of the cube, illustrating all faces and edges. The shortcut for Zmodeler is B , Z , M . The Zmodeler functionality operates similarly to a brush. Holding Alt allows you to select faces. Shown below, I held down the Alt...
Read more