BA3a Task 1 Summary

Task 1 Brief

Hotel Hallway

By their very nature, hotels are designed to teem with life but when business dips and owners can no longer afford to keep the doors open, the building’s inviting atmosphere dissipates. Lobbies once choked with people become yawning and shadowy. Wandering down hallways with darkened rooms flanking either side becomes an exercise in courage. In these places, the mind plays tricks, inventing footfalls, laughter, and snippets of music from a bygone age—or perhaps some guests really do never leave.

For Concept Artists

Design an atmospheric environment which can be used to drive the first paranormal encounter in the game.

My Idea

The souls which do not rest here are ancient beings of the forest; who are angry that this hotel has been built on their home. The evil which lives in this hotel that will be present at the paranormal encounter will look very organic, much like enchanted plant life. I have visualised that some of the paranormal activity which happens when the player walks along the hallway would be a very sudden and shocking experience, which is why I also want there to be unearthly spirits that fly towards the player when the encounter starts. Not only this, but there will also be a pair of animal claws which are tearing apart the middle of a door; trying to pry it open at the end of the hallway.

I have chosen to draw my final environment piece in the hand painted Blizzard art style because I'm very focused in what I want to achieve when university finishes, where working for Blizzard is my end goal as a concept artist. I love their games and it's essentially my dream job, which I am committed to work towards no matter how long it takes me to climb to that level of skill. Since my year long creative practice project will help me build a very diverse portfolio in the style of titles that could apply to multiple games such as The Elder Scrolls series, Uncharted, Guild Wars 2 and Assassins Creed; I thought these short tasks would be a brilliant way for me to continue developing my skills for a company that has a particular style that I'm interested in. Personally I feel it's a good thing for me to be versatile in what I draw as I want to become more competent in both realistic and stylised artwork.

Sketching the Hallway Interior

Because we only have two weeks to create our hallway environment piece, I wanted to get straight into the interior layout design and how the encounter would look. I am still working on my perspective drawing skills and

Colour and Mood Variants

Deciding the Bird Spirit

As part of the encounter I want a ghostly bird to fly towards the player from outside one of the windows. I don't want to spent too much time designing it because I know that the interior is the focus, however I have done some visual research on a Raven, Owl and Eagle; as well as drawn them all to decide which one to use.

3D Composition Thumbnails

Now that I have decided on the Raven as my primary spirit within the scene, I have quickly created a basic mock-up of the hallway interior in Maya and rendered various shots in Marmoset. I know that I'm not too confident when it comes to perspective drawing, so I feel like these renders will allow me to create something that looks more realistically proportioned so I can paint over them.

To decide on the composition I wanted for my final interior piece, I posed the birds within 6 different views. My favourites were 4, 5 and 6. My issues with 1, 2 and 3 were mainly because of how much space the bird took within the scene, as I still want the hallway to be very visible since it was the main part of the brief (despite it being part of the encounter). I really liked 5 because you could easily see the whole hallway I had created, however I felt it wasn't as visually dynamic as the other two since the bird wasn't flying towards the viewer of the painting; when that was what I envisioned it being from the start. Choosing between 4 and 6 proved very difficult for me, as I am fond of the overall composition of 4. I liked how the bird didn't need to be fully visible, as well as the perspective not being completely central like the other one. However, I really like 6 and how it looks like the viewer/player has fallen to the floor and is looking up at the bird, which makes it seem more intimidating.

Final Piece

I will fully admit that I left task 1 way too late in the project and had to rush this environment, which is why it's not up to a standard I'm very happy with. I definitely spent more time on the creative practice project and ended up putting some tasks to the side quite a bit unfortunately. In the end I decided to only draw the birds and leave out the glowing vines, because it would've cluttered the scene too much and made it look messy otherwise.