Concept Project: Water Magic

I made some of these pieces as part of my university assignments, but the underlying story idea is my attempt at original worldbuilding. The world is named Tongueia (I wanted to mix speech into it somehow), and it is effectively an alternate version of Earth.

The main idea behind this world/story is that people, a long time ago, learned how to speak the languages of the classical elements (fire, earth, air etc) : this then enabled people to gain much more intimate knowledge of the world around them, and a few gained enough 'trust' with the elements that they became able to ask them for favours or give them commands.

The first thing I really tried to design was a main character: through them, I could imagine a world with which they would interact. Eventually, I created Mizumi: a young girl who becomes a Hydromancer (water mage) and journeys across the world encountering 'magic' in both wondrous and horrifying forms.

This splashart shows Mizumi standing in the centre of a whirlpool she conjured. This piece took me about a month to fully complete, and I am proud of it. The progress went as shown below:

My main difficulties for me were in the rendering of the water and clothing. I set myself an extra challenge with the clothing: my original aim was to make her clothing look as if it was made of fish scales and fins, because that's what I want clothing in this world to be like. However, on the advice on those who gave me feedback, I decided to simply try to make the clothing look like typical fabric. 

The thing I reworked the most was definitely the water background: I fell into the trap of thinking 'oh yes I know what that looks like' and while I did look up references, I didn't refer to them as closely as I should have done. I reached my final result by redrawing the entire background with one brush set to different sizes and opacities: it forced me to think more about the result I was aiming for, as if I was painting with a physical canvas and paints.

While I'm proud of this piece, I would definitely focus on improving the shading of the skin and the texturing of the clothing. I was very ambitious with the angle of the camera, so next time I think I would try a different view.

To add a little more into the world of the Hydromancer, I designed a magical water fount for another university assignment.

For this prop, I built a quick blockout in Unreal Engine, and based my lighting on this: the picture made of shades of blue was used as a visualiser to show what the shading levels on each side would be. Visually, I wanted to make the glowing pool the focus for the player to interact with, while also making the structure look natural and organic.

I based the stone structures off of the basalt columns, like what you'd find at the Giant's Causeway: I felt they'd be the best base in nature because they already look almost manufactured. The face was a bit of a sudden thought: I considered making it look human, but then I felt that might look more sinister than I wanted. It ended up looking more like a bird, which I liked: it looks a little intimidating, but the contrasting shapes and edges makes the face stand out. Given that this fount would be located in more natural looking environments, it would need to stand out from the rest of the world, otherwise the player would not know to interact with it.

This is an entirely self-contained project as of right now: these are my best pieces that relate to it so far. I intend to keep working at it, and hopefully bring it to life as something more tangible for others to experience. I can assure anyone reading this that I definitely have some adventures in store for Mizumi! :)