Penguin Temple Gate | Environment Concept Art

This project was for one of my assignments as a Master's student! I'm currently studying a Masters in Games at Norwich University of The Arts. I am super passionate about environment concept art and I love producing realistic work. The focus of the project was to produce work we enjoy and enhance the skills we already have.

I produced this piece after months of failed artworks, as with the pandemic I felt like I had lost my identity. The Masters has been a great way for me to reignite my passion for game art and put me back on track with my goals.

This temple is inspired by Cambodian and Balinese Temples, I took great inspiration in general from both cultures and their religion to produce my own temple gate. The penguins were added as a juxtaposition to something you would not normally see outside a temple gate. Penguins are my favourite animal, and it felt like a fun challenge to add an animal that is considered to be located in colder climates (however, my penguin design is inspired by the Galapagos penguins, which are warm climate penguins!)

As well with the statue of the penguins, I had Balinese and Cambodian architecture in mind. It was important to me that they look regal and blended well with the temple gate I had designed. As the architecture of both Cambodian and Balinese temples are very cohesive in their design. I sculpted the statues in ZBrush after drawing out the concept and design, and then took screenshots of the model into Photoshop to get an idea of how aged I wanted them to look. My thoughts were this temple gate is quite old, and is shrouded with foliage as the environment has took over - so it was important that it was reflected in the design.

I used Blender to produce a 3D block-out of the temple gate and then created a scene in Blender to start painting over. I also created my own alphas to use in my models to assist in the final design. I used a variety of images, textures and painting to achieve the finished look. You can find some of the image packs I used below!

This project made me realise how much I love creating cinematic environments for games, and I hope I get to make more like this in the future!

Reference Packs:

https://www.artstation.com/marketplace/p/RK3r/ultimate-jungle-photo-reference-pack

https://www.artstation.com/marketplace/p/Lv6/angkor-temple-pack

Thank you for looking at my work! I hope you like it! :)

www.artstation.com/cosmokki