As part of making my asset pack, I made concept art of some of my assets. First, I made a miniature version in Maya, then I took a screenshot of that and traced it out in Photoshop using a graphics tablet.
First I made a miniature model of the Tower in Maya which I could use as a template to sketch over.
I then imported a screencap of the model into Photoshop
I made a new layer in Photoshop where I traced over the image using a graphics tablet. Here is the finished outline.
To add the colour, I first used the magic wand tool to select the outline and set a new layer where I could only work inside the selected area. Next I created a gradient which I placed over the image to achieve the colour fade effect I wanted.
Introduction
For the second section of the asset pack brief I was tasked with creating concept art based of the research I have completed prior to this activity. In my asset pack group we thought about alternate realities and how our world as we know it would differ if some new major events happened in history. We decided to incorporate traditional Japanese architecture with futuristic/alien aspects as in this version of reality aliens invaded the earth and humanity destroyed itself. For the assets themselves our plan is to turn a traditional Japanese garden into a shrine to the alien race.
The first piece of concept art I created was this traditional Japanese archway to be used as an entrance/exit of the scene.
My inspiration for this archway was Temple Street Night Market entrance in Hong Kong, I used this archway as a reference as it was not as simple as the ones I had seen when looking at other Japanese or Chinese archways and I preferred the level of detail this particular archway. I found the initial sketching stage of this arch to be very difficult as it was only my second time using a graphics tablet and was particularly finding it difficult to get the perspective and angle of the drawing right. The end result is something that I am proud of which boosted my confidence going into the next piece.
The second concept piece is what I intend on the scene layout to be like somewhat so. Creating this concept was helpful as it gave me a perspective on the placement and layout of the assets I intend on making. For example, prior to this concept I wasn’t planning on creating boulders but I feel like without it the scene would look a lot more empty. Furthermore, now that I have drawn the scene I believe it would look much better without the blood river running through the centre.
Creating this concept took a lot longer than I initially expected as I was working hard to get the perspective angles just right. Using the graphics tablet was easy at this point as I was familiar with how it works. In this concept I wanted to have a go at shading instead of just using block colours, this is something else that I found to be difficult as I found creating realistic looking shadows to be quite difficult. I believe that I will get better with more practice.
It is common in pop culture for extra terrestrial life to be associated with cooler colours such as blue and green, evident in movies such as Alien (1979) and Avatar (2009). This is what influenced me in choosing the colours for the architecture in the concepts. I wanted to keep the architecture itself mostly traditional Japanese , with a few exceptions, and instead show what has been changed by the aliens through the use of these colours and markings which is why the wood is painted this teal blue instead of the bright red we see in Asian architecture.
With this in mind I revisited the Archway concept and adjusted the colour palette by using the same colours I used in the second concept piece. I believe this makes the archway different from traditional Japanese architecture while remaining familiar.
While adding colour to a concept piece is key to visualising how the colours work together I personally prefer the aesthetic style of the concept art in the sketch phase. When I create concept pieces in the future I will likely not add colour unless it is essential to do so.
My partner for this asset pack project is James Green, he has also completed concepts that I have been given permission to talk about in this blog post. Here is a link to James’ own blog .
Here James had created concepts for two lanterns and a rock, the lantern on the right is a traditional Japanese garden lantern which has alien hard light technology holding up the top of the lantern, giving off light and giving the lantern the appearance of floating. The lantern on the left I feel personally reflects a similar outline of traditional Japanese roof tops with the floating orb giving it a futuristic alien-esque vibe. I believe this lantern would make a great centre piece for a shrine table in the scene.
The next concept sheet features a concept for a baptism font with alien influences, a shrine table and an alien flower.
The intention for the shrine table is for it to be placed in the centre of the shrine with an artifact in the middle of the table with a katana resting on top to indicate that the table is used for human sacrifices. The font has glowing, blue Japanese text on it to indicate that its an item created by the aliens, furthermore, a dark stone has been used instead of white marble as seen in traditional Church fonts. For the flower, blue has been used once again to indicate that it is an alien plant, the intention for this plant is for the blue part to emit a glow effect.
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