The Animal Shrine & The Neon Graveyard

The Animal Shrine

Artstation Feudal Japan Challenge

For the challenge, contenders were allowed a deadline of only 2 months. As rules in the competition go, I haven't used any resources for this. Everything you see is created from scratch, by me.

This is the first project of this scale I do in 3D. Competition was fierce and the challenge is full of amazing artists with years and years of experience making art like this. I worked every single day through the given period. I hope that my work stands good against the rest of the lovely projects.

I animated and recorded a showcase video, trying not only to showcase the project, but to tell a story of sorts through it.

Creation Process:

Through the making of it, I took about 650 screenshots in Unreal. I assembled them in a development video. Whilst making the project, everyone was asked to keep a blog about it too. You can read mine over at Artstation for more insight:

www.artstation.com/contests/feudal-japan/challenges/51/submissions/36696

I was given the opportunity to write a breakdown article over at 80.lv. Check it out to read my reflections on the project for those 2 months of creating it.

www.80.lv/articles/building-an-ancient-animal-shrine-in-ue4-001agt-004adk

The Neon Graveyard

The Neon Graveyard is a personal project. It's about a ruined, probably at first abandoned cemetery. On the very top of its hill, a chapel stands proud. But there is a weird, modern twist to this. The world in which this place resides is a gritty, Cyberpunk world. One full of neon signs, electric colors, rain and vapour. The churchyard has been repurposed.

The project I created just before this one, was one set in a more fantasy world, in the middle ages. With this one, I wanted to instead go towards sci-fi. Towards tech noir.

My intend with this was to create something perhaps a bit cynical. A mockery of Death of some kind, in an dystopian world. There Death still exists, but is not a problem like the one in our current world. And what more insubordinate than neon lights on headstones instead of ordinary, stone inscriptions?

If the gravestones have neon lights, I thought it might be cool to turn the caskets into some kind of devices as well.

I wanted to have a go at making something closer to hard surface. I decided to replace their ordinary purpose of holding the remains of people, and turn them into a set of servers and routers. The consciousnesses of different individuals are stored on those.

Later, the minds of those people are moved to other facilities, or sometimes into newer, more cyber heavy bodies. Some people, though, prefer to be kept on those servers, and live in a digital utopia. A Personal Eternity.

Creation Process:

I assembled a two minutes time-lapse of the making of the scene. It combines over 300 screenshots from the main camera in the environment. The creation of the project took around 260 hours between January and May of 2019. As I said, the idea and concept are my own, and thus it makes it a very personal project. The scene was used for a final year thesis in BA (Hons) in Games Design at University of Central Lancashire, Preston, UK as well.

And here is a Rookies Process View of a few of the screenshots from the video above.

All models and textures were created from scratch, exclusive for this project. More development and behind the scenes images:

Through the making of the project, I documented its creation in eight blog entries.

You can read those over at my blog.

www.artstation.com/peterdimitrov/blog/rz2j/the-neon-graveyard-conclusion-and-index

Hope you enjoy it,

Pete.