This next phase of my project has consisted of notetaking, jotting down ideas, and sketching. I’ve been putting some time into researching perspective to hopefully use it to the best of my ability in my environments that I create.
I’ve begun a notebook on my iPad and started filling it with notes and tips I’ve found regarding using perspective in art. It is definitely my weakest point in art, and I still struggle with using perspective with less boxy shapes (like a boulder or a tree), since a lot of perspective tends to be taught using buildings and more square bases.
I also began sketching some already-existing environments that I was really fond of, hoping to grasp how the perspective works in some of these environments and to find what I really liked about them. I’ve included some examples of those below.
From these sketches, I found I really enjoy having something in the foreground, such as a plant, or something else to catch the viewers eye briefly or make the viewer feel more immersed in the environment I create.
Alongside these, I also tried practicing and playing with some of the perspective tools in Procreate, which is my typical software of choice when it comes to digital art for this project.
Finally, I began to create some basic concepts of how I want my environments to potentially look. So far, I believe I want my forest environment to all spawn from one large tree, similar to the banyan-grove tree in Avatar: The Last Airbender. I like the idea of the magicical elements in nature wanting to all naturally gravitate together, and so a magical forest would all be connected together with the magic naturally gravitating toward the “host tree”.
For my mountain environment, I decided that this would be the place where the magic crystals would form and be harvested from. I would love to include a cave opening where the crystals typically form, as well as crystals naturally forming along the paths and ravines of the mountain ranges.
Unfortunately I have fallen a bit behind on creating ideas for my village, but as soon as I work on those I will begin my final stage of creating my final colored sketches, and final renders of my environments!