[Monika] For this project I decided to step up and take the role as an environment artist. During our second year and the development of our vertical slices, I had the role of a character concept artist and environment prop modeller and texturer. But after joining the team for 'Game 15' I quickly realized that I won't be able to retain that position. There already was a character artist but no one was doing the environment so I couldn't just create props and textures for it. So I saw the opportunity and decided to take it. I've never done full environments before, I rarely even draw scenery. In addition, the style of the game was something completely different from anything I had tried before. But I saw this as a chance to fill in the gaps and the skills I was lacking. It was obviously going to be a long process of learning, trial and error and 'do it again'.
The original concept was pitched and I was given the task to draw canyons. We wanted to put the player in corridors so we decided to literally do that with canyons, perfect natural barriers.
My research showed me some amazing natural wonders. I noticed that the colours in canyons are absolutely beautiful,nice warm and orange and the way the light reflects in the sand and the rays coming from above through these obscure rock formations- fascinating! I really wished I had the skills to replicate these natural phenomena into 3D environments. But sadly, I had a lot to learn.
I started thinking more about these canyons, making concepts and sketches, but I very quickly got bored of the sand and everything being the same colour. I wanted to make it more interesting and I decided to try and add some vegetation. I did some tests and I quite liked the combination of the warm orange tones and the lush green. This also worked with our idea for having a broken world, one where time and space are torn and mixed and you get bizarre combinations like that. But it all still needed to make sense in context. There's grass, but grass can't grow without water. We still needed to create little rules like that to help us make our fantasy world believable.
For this purpose, an environment one-sheet for the canyon was created. A set of rules to follow while creating the world and always refer back to.
It was decided that the level was going to start off as if it was a pretty normal place, the usual canyon with the sand and only rocks laying around. But as the character progresses through the level, things were going to slowly change and get more curious.
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