Further Environment Details - Matt Glen (Concept Art)

Here are some further little details to help inform the modelling of several rooms and props. First, the Crystal Room, which needed several details fleshed out a little more.

Crystal Room

Below are several sketches taken from the first concept for the room. I wanted to lay out a simpler depiction of what certain details actually consisted of in terms of form and structure. The simple column here was used to plan out some variants on the initial single pillar in an earlier post.

From here I started to quickly sketch out plans of other objects from the room and how they would sit from different views, including the alcove, crystal and roots.

These images are not immensely detailed or technically strong, but they act to give a more three dimensional view of the room and what sits within it. Hopefully these should be enough to give a clearer idea of where everything goes and how it should be modeled.

Screaming Cells

For this room, I first did a vertical plan to see how the room would be put together in a modular format by our 3D artists. The layout is very simple and repetitive, and should easily come together into a larger area.

I next did a quick illustration of what the inside of one of the little, light-emitting cells might look like. I wanted to keep it pretty simple so that it could be copied and pasted to make multiple cells without needing many changes, and I also tried to keep with the grotesque faces theme that this area of the level has a lot of.

Once these ideas had been run past the team, we decided that the room at the end of the cell block should be redesigned into a smaller chamber in which a crystal would hover.

This gave the room more of a purpose, as well as simplifying the layout of the room to eliminate completely superfluous spaces that would add very little to the game experience. This room is pretty simple and modular, but once it's put together in the final game with lighting, it should be quite an effective and imposing space. 

Threshold Steps

This room was fairly straightforward and self-explanatory from the initial illustration. It consists of a circular, elevated platform connected to a bridge. I put together this quick side view to give a better idea of the dimensions of the space, as well as a view of the entrance that leads to it. Other than this, the only other objects in the scene were more Gothic face-lights, which there is already a separate design for that should do the job.

This room should look pretty good once it's made, and makes for a very dramatic final stage on which to end our vertical slice. It'll be really interesting to see how these designs are adapted into 3D and turned into a real space. Hopefully they'll feel connected and part of one larger theme, while still having their own identities and atmosphere.