Yr3 Week 1: Style Matrix - WoW Diorama

As mentioned in my introduction back to third year post, the first project, or rather set of projects, is the style matrix! This includes a variety of topics you can choose between, either 2D or 3D, in a selection of styles such as realistic, semi stylised or fully stylised. Each topic and style has a variety of different briefs that can be chosen from, such as environments, concepts, characters, props, etc.

For my second and third projects, I plan to make a matching character and mini environment in a semi-stylised theme so that I can explore stylised PBR and environments more. However for my first project I have chosen to do the stylised World of Warcraft (WoW) diorama, as I would like to practice putting together an entire scene myself individually, and in all honesty because I love WoW and I couldn't turn down an opportunity to try and make something in the style of my favourite game!

I started this project the same as any others - I put together some mood boards for inspiration and ideas to determine what I wanted to create. Whilst having a very obvious style, WoW has various expansions and styles throughout it's world, all looking very different and using different colour palettes and moods to fit the story lines. I thought that it would be important for me to select on of these areas and follow it's style choices to create the most accurate and identifiable representation of the game.

After looking at many areas, I decided to go with the expansion Mists of Pandaria, as I feel it has quite a distinct character and uses interesting colours and accents. It also has lots of potential for interesting props, such as oriental style houses and interesting trees and foliage. I was quite interested by the style that the farms in the game use, and thought it'd be perfect to create a miniature farm myself as it has potential for lots of character.

After collecting images for reference myself of the area I wish to produce (who doesn't love taking pictures of their favourite game for "research" purposes?!), I began to build a bigger picture of what I wanted to create and began to start brainstorming in 3D as I found this to be a quicker in comparison to drawing silhouettes for environments, as I feel like it gives me a better idea of the space I want to use and achieves a good outcome faster, it also means I have a whitebox for paint overs and quicker concepting! I'm not quite sure if this approach is encouraged by my course as it is very clear cut "you MUST have 2D concepting!!" but as this year is meant to be doing more of we want to do, and I do not want to be a concept artist, I prefer a 3D approach. I do however plan to do concepts for colours and the final design.

After deciding on how I wanted to present my diorama and exploring different ideas with islands or podium style layouts, I then started to look into different arrangements of the main props and items. I used very simple shapes and block outs for this process. The tree I'm using is from my Off the Map project from last year and is just a placeholder.

I decided to go with my final design as seen in number 12 in the picture above, as I felt like it was an interesting shape and I liked the multiple layered design and felt it look a lot more natural than some of the other designs I had experimented with. From this I then did a few simple paintovers of the design to have a look at some values and prop placements.

I quite liked the idea of experimenting with fence posts in a closed environment, maybe making a little animal pen on the island with farm animals in. (There are some very badly drawn pigs in the top left design - honest). I also decided trees were a must on the island to ensure there was a correct balance with the house. Having more of an idea what I wanted to include, I then moved on to making a more detailed 3D model. I found this quite a good way of working, especially in environments; as once an asset was created I could experiment with it's placement in real time and make modifications as I went along and saw fit.

These are some images of my more detailed assets starting to come together in a scene. While I am hoping to use the majority of these in the final scene, I do plan on refining a lot of things quite a bit further from this point. The house for example I feel needs to be more exaggerated, and I am wanting to add fence posts around the island like in my concepts and idea generation. Once I am happy with my assets and their layout I plan to do paintovers to experiment further with colours and values before doing a final concept and finishing my model before unwrapping and texturing.

Although my final concept is not yet complete, I feel like I have made good progress on the model and think that I am on track for completing this project within the timeframe needed.