Island Lighthouse - Concepts part 2.5

Just a very quick and dirty mockup in UE3 too get to know the editor again. It's been a while since I used it so this is  good practice, even though it doesn't look all that awesome...

If you want to get a job in the games industry, knowing how to use one of the readily avaliable editors is a good thing to have on your CV. Choices include Unreal Editor 3 (Unreal Tournament 3), Sandbox 2 (Crysis), Source (Halflife 2, Team Fortress 2) and the Enemy Territory: Quake Wars editor. There are of course a lot more than that you can experiment with such as Unity, Torque3D and even Blender. And of course, there are the in-house engines that a company might use instead but those you will get to learn on the job. But the good thing is, if you have shown that you can learn how to use a freely avaliable editor, odds are you will be able to learn the in-house one too. And of course you'll be more interesting to a studio that uses an editor you know how to use so it's a win win situation. At it's most extreme, it can be the difference between getting a job and not.

Island Lighthouse - Concepts part 2 + doodle

Did some more doodling, just testing things in my mind. I think I will have time to do a proper 3d blockout/whitebox in UE this (extended!) weekend so hopefully I will be updating again before too long. The big question now is how big to make the island. Just a slip of a rock with a lighthouse like in the earlier concepts or slightly larger with a few trees, a beach etc. I'm leaning towards slightly bigger since it will be possible to add more stuff but at the same time, does it really need to be bigger with more stuff? And that is why a 3d blockout will help, to see what works and what doesn't. Now for images!

And a completely unrelated doodle, inspired by reading Tom Sawyer.

All the doodles were drawn in my little Moleskin notebook and (badly) photographed with the built-in webcamera on my laptop so please forgive the quality :)

Amazing artist

Completely not related to anything environment arty, but worth a post anyway. Jesse Turner is a great artist who has a ton of llustrations online, have a look: Massive art dump

Very cool style, crazy colouring and awesome ideas all in one big heap, makes me want to take them all, create them in 3d and animate them!

Island Lighthouse - Concepts

This is the beginning of my Island Lighthouse.

I thought I'd share all the steps I go through to take an environment from idea to finish and the first step apart form having an idea, is concept art. I started by having a look at some lighthouses online using Google and flickr (among others) to get some reference on what kind of lighthouses there are and maybe some environments. I did have a pretty clear image in my head when I started so this was just to see if there were any neat elements I could use.

The next step was to start drawing and trying to capture what I had in my mind. These drawings are just quick doodles to help you shape your idea, to see where it takes you, not something you have to stick to to the bitter end. The first image I did was literally a 5 minute Photoshop sketch with some crazy colours.


While not pretty, it sets the mood somewhat. Blue sky, sunlight, a blue sea and distant lands on the horizon. A rocky side and a nicer, sandy side. With that done, I switched to good old pen and paper, or in my case, ballpoint pen and paper (Muji black 0.5mm ballpoint, they just feel good). One thing among many that I learned at Vancouver Film School was to do a larger drawing and then do detail studies of parts of it which is what I did with the image below. The rock on the left is a way for me to explore what I want the rock to look like without over-detailing the main image. Seagulsl are always nice and handy as a size reference too.


With that done, time for some more interesting perspectives and again, some details to see what kind of materials the lighthouse would be built with for example.


Adding in various details such as seagulls and the fish brings it to life a bit and also helps set a mood that I would like to try and achieve in the final scene. And it's good practice too, even if they are really simple.