Environment: Owl Realm
The concept art seen here is for a game still currently in development. My role in the team is to create concept art for character & world designs, as well as 3D character modelling and animation.
The protagonist of this game has the power to traverse between realms like the Owl Realm, home to an owl populace driven by academic and religious scholarship. The realm takes heavy geographical inspiration from East Asian and Chinese aesthetics in the mountainous dissected plateaus with thick greenery densely enshrouded in mist.
Every sheet has its own caption for the contents, please read them to find out more about the concept art creative process.
The Owl Realm takes heavy geographical inspiration from East Asian and Chinese aesthetics in the mountainous dissected plateaus with thick greenery densely enshrouded in mist.
This elevator was designed to be placed in a museum exhibit on a cliffside where boarders would have to take the lift from the ground up to the museum exhibit. This elevator was inspired by Chinese architecture and Art Nouveau styled ornate décor.
It has one long elevator shaft up a cliffside that would move using a rope and pulley, and the elevator only has 2 destination points: the ground, and the museum exhibit cliff. The elevator mechanisms were influenced by real vintage elevator mechanisms.
How you ride the elevator is essentially ringing a bell to signal for it to come down, then touching a magical stone inside to make it go up again once everyone is seated.
Thumbs of the elevator box and the elevator shaft. Designing an exposed elevator shaft more difficult than I expected.
Basic 3D model of elevator to get a better sense of the mechanism’s function.
Fusing Art Nouveau with Chinese architecture, which are both garish and ostentatious styles, makes for a good combo.
This grand meditative temple is built in the middle of a tall waterfall only reachable by air travel, and its function is to act as an academic institution for owl scholars to attain religious enlightenment.
The temple is made of hardwood and comprises 2 levels; the upper level contains the holy altar for the religious deity, while the lower floor is made of a social meeting room, a library and other meditative spaces.
Floor plan of the temple.
Interior cut section of the left atrium of the temple; the head monk's office and tearoom for visitation purposes.
Preliminary 3D model of the temple interior.
Rudimentary 3D model for the temple.
These thumbs are a result of experimenting with the temple layout after studying real life references.
These thumbs focus more on the central temple design, made after studying architectural styles.
The thumbs shown here experiment with different compositional styles on how to best showcase a grandiose temple in a waterfall.
I researched the architectural layouts and functions of Buddhist monasteries in Tibet, Myanmar, Japan to understand how monks and nuns make use of these institutions today in order to develop this temple’s place in the game narrative.
I researched the materials to be used in the scene, such as grass, rock and water by studying pictures of appropriate waterfalls and temples and compiling them into a visual library.
Pictures of pillars, floors, ceilings, general architecture references, as well as interior design references.