Grad Project Zapata Bryan 2023

GRADUATION PROJECT

For this, I wanted to challenge myself and my skills to create a city under some world constraints for a video game that would take place in the world of Lumar. I started with the Idea of Atlantis, a lost civilization under the water, for the 12 weeks we had this situation would have created a lot of problems in order to make it believable and get the mood and feeling I wanted to portray, Problems like the lighting under water how could it work? why are they in this place? would this situation be possible in this world setting? how did they build this place? etc...I had to a decision and pick my battle with caution. This would have been an interesting idea to explore but It would have required more time to execute properly. The way I find to make it work was for it to be hidden in a cavern, I imagined that they found an island with difficult access but the proper conditions for them to proliferate as a culture and the possibility for me to create the mood and story I was trying to tell. This feeling is a sense of wonder, I wanted the player to enter from a place of discomfort and difficulty, rewarding them with the discovery of a whole new civilization for them to explore and learn from, an idea that I got from playing one of my favorite games: Darksouls 3, I remember vividly the moment I saw Irithyll of the boreal valley for the first time and the impact it made on me, I wanted to create this feeling with my own take on this project.

For this keyframe, I used mainly a 3D workflow since it would allow me to quickly iterate, modify and reuse the elements and props I built. I used tools like Adobe Medium, Gravity Sketch, and Blender to find out the best approach for creating this world. After a lot of exploration and being happy with the setting, I went into Photoshop to finish up and reinforce the mood I had established.
In the slider, you can see an example of some of the steps and Iterations I made before getting to the final image.

The images below were created under a time frame of approximately 3 weeks I tried to maintain the coherence and continuity of the mood through the shots. Reusing some props and assets was key to efficiency as well as it allowed me to upgrade the amount of detail and translate knowledge I got from one image to another at the same time, this was a valuable thing I learned while working on The Lost Empire.

Above you can see some of the key references from the real world for creating this project, this allowed me to ground the Idea and set some constraints that helped to make it believable to the viewer.

This was a very ambitious project, therefore I found a lot of challenges to Overcome. In the beginning, I needed to find which was the best way to produce this kind of image as well as settle down the foundation of the Idea, in the first 2 images you can see some exploration I made using Adobe Medium (VR) and Blender to make a quick render trying to get the mood and scale right. This workflow was quickly discarded as the results tend to be more organic due to the way I used the software. Since It was a big scene I will have to deal as well with the optimization of assets, the models produced by medium can have a high amount of geometry that for this specific case was not necessary and will be counterproductive later on as the scene will be super heavy and difficult to handle. 

I found Blender to be the best way to explore this idea, I created some very basic assets trying to reference and hint at the type of architecture I was aiming for. The initial Idea was to make the buildings carved into the rock as we can see in places like Petra in Jordan. In the cavern there would be some wholes above that will allow the city to have sunlight and a possible source of water due to rains, as I started playing with this Idea and scenario, moving light, adding some fog some rock elements I saw the potential of it turning into something more than an ancient civilization that would feel like if they were ruins. I wanted it to feel like it was alive so we move on to a more open space, using some boxes to try and figure out the scale of things, and reusing some of the assets as placeholders to quickly produce more Ideas for the mood, composition and layout of the city.

this created a problem and is that at this point I had interesting elements, the project was heading in an interesting direction, the lighting was cool the atmosphere was interesting, and we were getting somewhere... but they were still just boxes laying around!, and the city was turning more complex after each iteration (it was so fun I couldn't stop, once you learn how interesting a box can be with some good lighting, there is no way back...). At this point was very important to take a step back and really think about what I wanted to achieve, thanks to the guidance received at school I could figure out what was not working.

My first attempt to solve this problem was to find a way to express the scale and design some basic architecture, I used Gravity Sketch for it. I made some assets and build the whole scene in there with a more clear idea of what I wanted to achieve, having in mind the mistakes made before, then exported it to Blender and started playing with it. This is how I achieved the images below ( the 3rd and 4th), trying to implement all the knowledge acquired before.

At this point, I started to get something I was feeling happy about, It gave the impression of a city, and It had the mood I wanted and some elements I could use for the creation of the main image.

There was still a problem I didn't solve and it was the full design of the architecture, due to my inexperience doing this kind of shot, I overviewed how important it is to advance in all the aspects of the image at the same time, not only how it feels, but how it really works. I would learn my lesson later on when I had this Composition (the big one just below) that we really liked, It had all the elements I wanted to show, I could make some close up and you could see the city growing in the foreground.

I had to rework a lot of things, starting by figuring out the right scale for a human and a building in this scenario, something I couldn't have solved alone again the guidance of my instructor was key. As we moved on I developed proper assets with the right scale while keeping the lighting and mood we created in this exploration phase, In the final image of the city we had to move a lot of elements in order for it to make sense.
I got to learn a lot from this, how to light the scene properly, optimization of it, I got more aware of the needs a complex scene like this can have. I got to really learn my tools and find what works and what doesn't, the importance of keeping up with all the elements of the image ( life is not only about boxes...), how much the image can change once you have the proper elements on it, you will have to balance things every time.

All these things I learned during the exploration phase I carried to the execution of the final images, It was not an easy task but I feel like I got to improve a lot during the whole project in many ways, overall a great experience and definitely fun to work on!

Below are the concept art I've created for Paris 2084, one of the yearly project at New3dge, laying the foundation for the Game Art and CGI students, whose works are showcased in the subsequent slider presentation, bringing the initial concepts to life.

For this image, we had to develop a new style for a videogame and concepts in a period of 2 months, it was a sci-fi setting where we would use lineart as one of the main elements. 

we had to figure out a workflow that will fit our needs for the project, for it we used Blender and some of the stylization tools it has like the freestyle and interactive materials.

For the design part, we wanted to picture Paris as a city that would have liked to save some of its old buildings and characteristic elements, but in a futuristic setting and with some personal touches.

For the creation of this image, I worked very closely with our creative director Aurelien Fournier, art consultant Ulysse and art director Timo Peter, they give us great advice and guidance.

In the slider, you can see the amazing work that the students of game art did out of my concept as well as their names below the image

For the same project, I had the opportunity to create some storyboards and the poster below 
In this poster, I wanted to portray the personality of the main character of the videogame in contrast with the situation she is facing, she is Fighting IA and I wanted to get that feeling around her and in the environment, I was highly inspired by the art of Michael Sawtyruk.
It was a very fun style to work with! thanks to the guidance and great tips of Mike Azevedo class 

                                                                    PERSONAL PORTFOLIO

I love the idea of creating new worlds to explore, taking elements and details I pay attention to when observing the world to add later on in my projects brings me a lot of joy! learning new things and tools is another of my passions, I found 3D to be very fun to work with as an addition to my drawing skills which is how everything started!.

Huge thanks to everyone that made part of this journey, to my classmates that turn into friends which I was very lucky to spend time with, to my instructors for their valuable knowledge, advice and guidance, to my friends that had show me their support when I needed as well as my family for the big effort they had made in order for this to happen.

Special thanks to Bart who thought me a lot during these past weeks, thank you for how invested you were in our final projects, it means a lot! it was bombastic to work with you!

Finally thanks to New3dge and Aurelien for creating this program, is been an amazing experience!

Thanks for visiting my entry (:!

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