Where You Draw the Moon

The idea of the set started from a Korean tradition which people went to draw water first thing in the dawn from the local wells on the day of the first full moon of the year. People thought dragons came down on earth to lay eggs in wells. They considered the bubbles in the bowl that that drew water with were the dragon eggs and believed that the first person to get the water would get the best luck of the year.

Then I combined the tradition with one of the urban ecological parks in Seoul - Seonyudo Park. The island used to be a water filtration plant then turned into an ecological park after the years of industrialisation.

Starting from those two main ideas, I created assets mostly inspired by Korean culture including Korean shamanism to make the environment come together.

This game space is designed as a starting point of an open world RPG game. The environment is set in future Seoul where it has developed as a sustainable city but yet keeping its technological side. As people tried to restore nature in the city, the spirits of the land come alive and the character goes on a journey to fully restore the humane values in the world with the creatures and spirits. They made a hidden space under one of the water tanks as their base camp. And that is the environment I created.

Screenshots taken in UE4.

I created the assets mostly in 3ds Max and Maya, then used Blender for some quick work and baking. Then I textured them in Substance Painter. The plants - the willow, pot plants and lotus are created in SpeedTree. And the final composition, effects, lighting and final rendering was done in Unreal Engine 4.

Texture sets created in Substance Painter to UE4, first image for the bow and the second for the sword.

Water caustics turned into light material, water ripples material and light shaft material created in UE4.