When thinking about the premise of the project, I established that I wanted the main character to fall into a cave, their journey being trying to find their way out.
As a result, it felt logical for me to theme the environment around caves and how I could make it more visually appealing as opposed to just rocks.
In my moodboard, I looked at different shapes and colours that I could go for depending on the mood I wanted to set. Furthermore, the props that I could add could further add to the narrative of the cave being long forgotten by humans, leading to a sense of enigma. I also became pretty attached to the idea of adding objects that could create natural lighting like crystals, lamps, and plants.
I then found it helpful to create a pinterest board as this sort of design was pretty popular among miniature environments artists. This is what initially helped steer me away from the generic flat platform deseign for the environment.
This was my first pass at blocking down basic platforms that I could create.
Using the Pinterest board definitely helped broaden my ideas, especially with asymmetrical designs. Here you can also see me experimenting with composition and poses for my main character once rigged.
Through my own reflection, as well as peer input, I decided to go with the bottom design. It balanced the line between being simple enough, as well as visually busy without taking away from the main focal points. The curve of the columns make it feel almost portal-like, a cool reference to the main character ending up in an almost unreal place.
The colours stay in greyscale due to the nature of it being rocks and caves, there’s more colour experimentation in the production process.