World Building Week 11: Alien Landscape PT1

Here is a sketch that i did to practice forces / balance as this was the theme before it was changed:

This weeks concept is to design a variety of alien plants and the environment that they inhabit (to expand upon in a future assignment). However for this task the deliverables have been specified in more detail:

• need to decide the scale of your scene and show this in your design sketches with the indication of a human figure 
• Moodboard, plus plant and lighting research.
• Sketches of at least three design ideas before you move into Mudbox.
• A Mudbox sculpt - take at least 4 screen captures showing the work developing from initial to finish, it is unacceptable to present work magically appearing as a finished piece. 
• A well staged turnaround animation of your greyscale sculpt (i.e. no crazy camera moves)
• Try out lighting and composition. This could be done by exporting to Maya or 3dsmax if necessary. 
• Supply 3 compositions and use the best one to create your final piece. Be prepared to justify your lighting and composition choices.
• A colour paintover in Photoshop. Render size should at least 1500 pixels on the shortest edge.

Here is my reference sheet so far, i have included some research into 4 plants / flowers that i felt had interesting qualities. The majority of the artwork inspiration is from Levi Hopkins and was created for Guild Wars 2, i love his design ideation and his artworks have a quality that i would like to achieve in my final piece.

I'm still unsure exactly what plant i would like to create so I've just jumped into some silhouettes playing around with shapes. Next i would like to do some sketches in line. Here is the first page of silhouettes so far:

Here is a description of the purpose / function / traits of the plant:

It grows in cold climates and therefore folds and shrivels, essentially dieing, 
when it senses heat. It then blooms again, coming back to life, minutes after the heat is gone. Below the canopy of protective leaves there are sacks / eggs that contain poisonous spores. When irritated the spores are released into the air within a 2m radius of the plant for up to 4 hours. However when the protective cover of the leaves fold up the sacks burrow into the earth, allowing the ground to be walked upon.  Inhabitants of nearby areas use these plants to hide and protect their camps, strapping heat sources to themselves allows them to walk freely through the plants that cover their passageways, folding and dieing as they approach, only to bloom and spring back to life behind them moments later. Most outsiders know about the spores but are unaware of the plants heat resurrective properties therefore the camps are kept well hidden.

I have now taken some of my previous silhouettes and adapted them to my new description. Now that they are closer to my target i need to start taking some of the designs into lines to define them further.

Here are my 3 favourite silhouettes taken forward into line.  Next i need to decide which one stands out the most and take it into Mudbox / Zbrush to be used a 3D base for my final design.

My final design(S) with some lose values, top and batch views and some rough colour variations. Shall Zbrush one of these tomorrow.

I decided to go with the right design, as i thought it looked more like a plant that you would fine in a cold climate. Though... the spikey fern leaves have been a big pain in the ass to create in zbrush. Here are some progess shots from Zbrush. At one stage i added some extra texture points to the mesh but then at the end i decided that they didn't work and i preferred the original design, so i smoothed them out in the last shot.

Here is an unfinished turn around of the plant. It was taking too long and i still need to do the paintover, so it's only about half or 3/4 of a turntable so far. I'll try to remember to upload a complete turn table later.

Using my final model i tried out a few diffeent lighting and composition for different shots, i have used a landscape render and left open space in the shots as i was hoping to include the other plants in the scene as these plants are meant to be batched together. However i'm unable to figure out how to set up a scene like this in Zbrush (spent about an hou with too much annoyance so gave up), if i had more time i could try export to Maya but my model has 9million polys so this may not be a great idea. I figured out how to place more than one object into the scene which was perfect but it was far too hard to match up the perspective and scale and too easy to remove the previous object by accident.

The first shot is a bit more of an overview shot to show the whole plant. The second shot shows the whole plant but at a tilted horizon angle, which can create a more dynamic shot. The last shot is from a lower angle to immerse the viewer into the scene more. I thought that it could be interesting to include the rest of the plants and a pair of legs visible in between them to show the human scale.

I decided to choose a similiar composition to the first. This is because the whole point of this concept is to show off the design and therefore it needs to be seen from a clear angle. If i was going to do a more illustrative piece i would choose one of the more dynamic shots. However if i was able to render the additional plants within the scene this may have changed my mind.

As i was unable to render the extra plants i just duplicated the plant that i had and made some indication of the extra surrounding plants. I also added colour using layers and then some hints at texture from various photographs.  I also expanded the base by painting it in. I'm not too pleased with the outcome, the concept wouldn't work unless the plants are very close together (in order for the ferns to be dense enough to not see the ground beneath) and the ferns should also have more density. When i need to integrate the plant into the landscape i'll have to make a few modifications to better portray the concept.

Below is the larger resolution version: