Temple of Cronus

Temple Of Cronus, Final. I learned a lot taking part in this contest and am pretty happy with how it turned out.  I hope you all enjoy!

I started to work on the final render by first starting with creating the base for the rock formations and mountains by adding photo textures. Following will be a focus on editing the architecture and adding the character. I want to put extra attention on marrying the photo textures together so they loose their photoesque look while maintaining high textural fidelity. Let me know what you guys think?

I decided to go with thumbnail number one as I felt it best felt the prompt and the atmosphere I was going for. When design this environment/temple, I really wanted to deliver on the ancient feel of it but also the other worldly aspect that would really push the forbidden lands aspect. This led to creating a temple with heavy influence in ancient Greek Architecture while also making it affixed underneath the cliff of a mountain to instill intrigue in the player/viewer. The crystal was designed as the prison for Cronus' soul, I was thinking about different ways I can show life/energy without losing the dead environment of the Underworld I was intending. Enjoy!

Completed iterations on the Cronus' soul crystal prison to see explore the kind of shape language and enclosure that would best fit the environment. 

After reflecting on my previous work on this contest, I came the to the conclusion that I felt my previous thumbnails missed the mark at delivery of the forbidden lands theme. I decided to try again and set myself a more grounded theme and a more clear story/prompt for myself to follow. I decided to go for designing the Temple of Cronus, the resting place of the Titan Cronus' soul in the depths of Tartarus. After completing the thumbnails I already felt like I had a more clear direction and atmosphere to follow. 

Completed iterations of the character to explore the foreground area and their silhouette.

I completed some iteration sketches of the "Waterfall" area and my intention was to create a space that feels accessible to the player. I tried to vary different types of environments and different levels of interaction to see which best fit the environment I was going for.

In order to more effectively design certain aspects of the selected thumbnails, I completed some exploration sketches of Cronus' helmet to get a better feel for the environment and how to balance the design around it. 

This thumbnail was selected as the one to bring to completion as I felt it embodied the atmosphere and scale I was looking for. The gigantic helmet represents the demise of the Cronus and his  place of imprisonment, Tartarus.

Value thumbnails were done in order to find an easy to read composition. With simple shapes that are readable, interesting and have a clear resemblance of story. I tried to maintain some key elements such as  rivers, Greek architecture, etc with a mood of despair and death in order to give my environment the feel I was going for.