Environment Concept

Environment Concept

Final Environment

This is my favourite piece of work from this project, I am happy with the level of detail put into the drawing as well as the overall composition. I feel my environment conforms to the fantasy theme I set out for my work and therefore fits in with my character and prop design well.

Initial Thumbnails

I began this task by sketching some ideas for the sort of environment I wanted to create. I had in mind a very natural scene, with large fantasy mountains putting the viewer in a kind of valley. Additionally, I was making sure to include a foreground, middle ground and background in each of my designs. For the bottom right concept, I took elements of the top right and bottom left and merged them together. However, I found this broke the composition of the image somewhat. I also put some vague colour in one of the concepts so I could start to get an idea of colour scheme. I eventually decided to take the top right image onto further development, since I felt it had good composition and the potential to be an interesting scene.

Final Thumbnail

I developed the initial thumbnail to create my final idea for the environment. I added some fantasy looking gates to the focal point of the image to give it more interest, as well as to give the impression of a valley trailing into the mountains. Additionally, I put a character on a boat in the lake to not only help give the image further visual interest, but also to help give the image a sense of narrative in terms of why the character is there and why is he heading towards the valley.

I began by making a neat outline of my thumbnail so I had a good idea of where everything was to go whilst I was working on the image.

I used the above image as a base for most of the cliff faces in my environment.

Using the tools in Photoshop I could cut up the mountain image and place parts of it where I needed it in my own environment, slowly layering these parts on top of one another to create entirely new mountains.

I could then paint over the edited images using a soft brush to create my own shadows and highlights.

At this point I made my own brushes ready to add trees to the image and to create the shoreline. The tree brush I got from selecting one of the trees from the mountain image and cutting it out, and the rock brushes I painted myself.

Using these brushes, I added the tree lines across the mountains and the shore. Once the trees and rocks were placed I also had to go back and add shadows and highlights to them so they matched the lighting in the scene, this included the shadows the trees are casting on the ground.

At this point I added the gates to the valley. I did however move the position of the distant gates since the perspective was not quite right in their original position. The brick and wood textures seen above were layered on top of the gates and set to overlay mode in Photoshop to give them a more detailed texture.

Using the same techniques as the other mountains, I added the distant ones in the background. However, I also added a haze to make them appear further away.

I then decided to add the water. This was a lengthy process since it required a lot of editing. The above image is what I used as a base for my water, I began by using the perspective tool to place it in the scene where it needed to be, and then painted behind it with a light blue. I then duplicated the image texture, set one of them to overlay mode and the other to soft light; this created the impression of highlight and shadow in the ripples, with the blue colour coming through from underneath. I was then able to select various parts of the painting that I had already made, duplicate them, flip them, and set them to overlay mode to create the reflections. Additionally I blurred the reflections to make them less mirror like and more realistic, as well as used the smudge tool to give the impression of the ripples distorting them. The most important part of making the reflections was getting the perspective on them right, for example, the bottom sections of the trees on the shoreline would not be seen in the reflection because the ground and rocks are blocking the line of sight.

With the water done, I used the above image to create the rocks in the foreground. I used the same techniques I used for the mountains to cut parts out of the image and place them in the scene.

I shaded the rocks using a soft brush, and added a base colour for the shore. At this point I also removed the outline I had been working from since all the main elements of the image were now in place.

Using the same rock brushes I used for the distant shoreline, I added the rocky details to the shore and used a soft brush to add shadows and highlights. I also used the sandy image above to give the ground some texture.

I then drew the boat and character by hand, as well as the wake left by the boat in the water. Additionally, the character in the boat is based off of my character concept for this project.

To improve composition and to add some extra detail, I drew a rough bird silhouette and used it as a brush to create a flock of birds in the distance at the top right of the image. Additionally, I added some haze to the middle ground mountains.

At this point I saved the image as a separate file and flattened all the layers into one so I could edit the whole thing. I used the colour balance tool to give the image more of an orange hue, as well as using a soft orange brush set to overlay mode to go over some of the highlights, creating a more dusky tone to the environment.

As a final touch to my environment, I made another much more detailed tree brush from an image and used it to improve the composition by framing off the right hand side, therefore drawing your eye more towards the focal point of the image. Additionally, I darkened the rocks in the bottom right of the image since they stood out far too much, again improving composition by doing so.