Concept Art

This was the first piece of concept art I produced for my environment. I made it gray scale, dark and atmospheric, using silhouettes and generic lighting to portray a story of a feudal land in Japan. I hadn’t worked with Photoshop to make art all that much and it was an advance in the development of my game environment as much as it was an advance of my skills. I had ideas for assets I wanted to make already; torches, buildings, trees and a misty fog.

This was second piece of art I produced and features much of the same I made in my last piece. However, I feel that the sky I used in this one created a much better effect than the gray / black night sky in the last concept art. I acknowledged here I would probably never base my whole environment on one picture, but take the best parts of each picture and utilize each of them in the environment when I would come to make it.

This was the third piece of artwork I made and I decided to test a different source of light to portray a different time of day. This environment is portrayed at sunset, and I kept the theme of using silhouettes and black against the gold light of the sun. I knew I here I wanted my environment to be atmospheric, and I started thinking about sounds – the ones I would like to include and the ones that would be best left out.

My fourth piece of concept art I decided to set in a different landscape; high up in the mountains with rope bridged connecting the temple on each mountain to each other. I feel that this would make a very atmospheric environment and I do not feel up to the challenge of trying to re-create this realistically enough for my own liking in game format. I also realized that the scene does not appear as dark and brooding at daytime and decided I would have it set at night.

My last piece influential on my design philosophy for my environment; it is very atmospheric, and I decided the scene would be set at night, and that I would have a nearby lake in the scene and have assets such as a Shinto shrine introduced into the environment to better reflect the theme of Japanese culture in a fantasy environment. I also liked the idea of a house isolated on the top of a hill, and wanted an isolated home in my own environment.