Cube World: The Lost Wizard
For this project, we had to create a Cube World within 20x20 meters, based on environmental storytelling and 1 single prompt we were given at the start of the project.
Backstory
There were stories about ancient runes deep into a large forest. Somewhere hidden in the middle, a platform surrounded by these magical runes. People speak of a hidden power, an uncontainable power, they know too little about it to not be scared of it. One man was desperate enough to search for it. An old wizard, who spent his entire life creating a momentous spell, big enough to change the future, his future. After decennia of failed attempts, he decided to look for these ancient runes and so called almighty source of magical power, thinking it was the only option left. The consequences of his decision? Nobody really knows, he never returned.
Moodboards
After a lot of brainstorming for good scene ideas that captured the prompt 'mysterious', I came up with 3 ideas and made a moodboard for those ideas.
After deciding which style i wanted to use for this Cube World, I made a small styleboard. This one changed quite a lot as time went on, because certain things didn't work out after experimenting.
Concept Art & Process
I started by sketching out those 3 ideas I came up with.
Idea 1 was based in a forest, you can see a flashlight pointing towards footsteps that slowly turn from human footsteps into wolf footsteps. You can also see a scratch on one of the trees and a full moon in the background.
Idea 2 takes place on the sidewalk & street at night, there's a streetlamp with flickering light. Sometimes when it flickers, you can see a person standing underneath the light, but sometimes he disappears.
Idea 3 also takes place on the streets. You can see a bench with newspapers and a coffee cup laying on the ground. Once again there's a flashlight on the ground, pointing towards more clues.
When I asked 2 classmates for feedback, one said he preferred idea 3 and the second said she liked idea 2 and 3, idea 1 was too obvious which takes away from the 'mysterious' aspect of my Cube World. I also asked for feedback to Joost, he mentioned the proportions of the Cube World aren't quite right and that you also can't really animate light in Sketchfab.
I wasn't happy with the 3 concepts I came up with, they were a bit too boring for my liking. I also struggled a bit with coming up with a solution for the light animation problem, so I made another sketch that went a bit more in the fantasy direction which I really like.
Unfortunately when I made a block out in Blender, I realised that 20x20 meters is way too big for a single room.
I asked Teun for help, since I didn't know how to keep the idea of a wizard's room but also meet the requirement for the 20x20 meters. He brainstormed a little bit with me, and we came up with the idea to either create an environment around the room that still added to the story, or to bring the magic outside and create an outside 'room' where the wizard performs his magic.
In the meanwhile I also experimented with an outline add-on since I wanted to have this 2D style, but it didn't work in the FBX file and on Sketchfab.
After asking multiple people for feedback, I decided to make a new sketch with the help of a new moodboard. When asking Bang for feedback, he suggested I should point out the specific aspects of the moodboard I really liked, so I could take all those things and put them together in a sketch.
However, when I experimented with creating this scene in Blender, I was struggling a lot with making it look good while still sticking to this 2D style I really wanted to use.
I asked for more feedback, this time I went to Bjoern. He really liked my ideas, but he agreed that combining it with the 2D style I want to use, it's gonna be quite difficult. He suggested to either import 2D planes and turn them around a little bit so you can still see the scene from different p.o.v's, or make them all face the same way so you can see the scene from the front, but the planes disappear when you look at the scene from the side.
I decided to try the second option.
And like Bjoern said, you could only see the image from one perspective. Looking at the sides makes the layers disappear, and there's nothing interesting going on in the back because you could only see the back of the last few layers. After making that first block-out, I figured that it didn't really meet all the requirements for this project, so I decided to make one last final concept using that other technique Bjoern suggested.
Process Final Concept
I drew every single asset in Photoshop and then exported them to Blender.
The only problem I couldn't figure out, was why the bottom of the trees in the back row constantly disappear when looking at them from a certain angle. After asking multiple teachers without any result, I decided to make a test FBX export and import it to Sketchfab to see if the problem was still there.
(The first picture is the FBX file, the second picture is the Sketchfab file)
The original problem was gone, but I did have to figure out how to get all the transparent textures back. I figured out all the settings and then thankfully everything worked perfectly.
So now that I knew everything worked in Sketchfab, I could continue drawing the textures in Photoshop and importing them to Blender.
Sketchfab
To get all the transparent textures right, I used these settings.
Then for the lighting, I used these settings. Light 1 is to create these extreme shadows of the trees on the ground and to give everything a blue overlay. I used light 2 and 3 to light up the front and back of the scene so you can still see the textures, but the light is soft enough to make it look like a night scene.
I made the background a dark blue-grey color and turned vignette on so that everything looks even more mysterious.
End Result
Evaluation & Feedback
I think that even though it took several attempts and a lot of experimenting to get to this end result, the Cube World still looks really cool. I think I succeeded at making it 'mysterious', everything really came together when I added the night lighting in Sketchfab. Next time, I have to find a way to get to a good concept faster than this, since I spent half of the time we got for this project thinking of different concepts. I have to spend less time coming up with a good concept, so I can spend more time finalising the idea and make everything look even better. Because I had so little time to draw the assets, half of them look like sketches to me.
