Greyboxes and paintovers

We are still trying to work out an environment style, mostly to further separate us from Bioshock. After carefully assessing Art Deco, we have found the aesthetic opposite of it. Where Art Deco is rigid, straight, angular, and has little detail / color, our newfound style is a combination of natural geometry, fractals, and higher saturation, letting the architecture flow into itself. These greybox images show progress in the Atrium, the environment I'm working on.

First pass:

The centerpiece here will be a giant vertical aquarium. We've come a long way even in this short week:

The paintovers are quick visualizations of what we'll need to model in order to achieve the futuristic underwater resort look.

Peace,
-Kez

Exploring Environments

Some exploration when designing environments.

I'm a fan of the idea that you should learn something with everything you do, so as I was working on these sketches I was also trying to become aware of which environments were more successful and why. I'll share some thoughts of mine on what things you should keep in mind when designing environments and interactive spaces below...




As you can see, I started with some very uninspiring sketches. Proof that you should always iterate to keep trying new things. As I started to get to more interesting environments I realized that I did better work when I thought about the space more as an illustration.

Illustrations are meant to convey a mood or tell a story and there are a lot of techniques to aid the artist in doing so. There's composition, lighting, color, value, and lots of other ways the develop something that is successfully compelling to a viewer. This just as important in the design of an environment and space.
When I thought about the space in the same way as a subject in an illustration I began to brainstorm more into what kind of staging I should use, how things relate to each other and things that will communicate to the person moving around/interacting with it is supposed to feel or understand.

So something that I've learned is that when designing spaces, don't think of them as just something to stand and move around in. Think of them as an illustration that surrounds you on all sides.

Specified color reduction based on distance

In underwater situations, colors such as red, orange and yellow are only visible at close range. At further distances they disappear. I made a prototype material of this effect. This is just a functionality test for now.