Weekly Drills 67: BioShock Ligthouse Diorama

This is my entry to the Rookies Weekly Drill 67 about Lighthouses, I made a little diorama with the lighthouse from BioShock infinite and the underwater city of the first BioShock game

When I started searching for references a remember the BioShock lighthouse and the idea of doing it with the underwater city came to me instantly. I started looking at reference but the lighthouse of the first game is usually dark and I couldn’t see the detail, I decided to check the lighthouse of the second game and decided to do that one instead because of the better reference and the nicer overall design of the lighthouse. the following are all the reference images I used in my process.

then it was time for the sculpting, modeling and defining of the main shapes on silhouettes

then I started with the refining of the details and materials while getting started on the underwater city

then I added textures in substance and continued to work on the underwater city

At this point I felt like I couldn’t make the underwater city work, there was something that felt a bit off, like they weren’t from the same world. I was about to give up on the idea when I decided to look at city skylines and really pay attention to how a city looks and feels. that is when it all clicked, I realized I had to start over and do skinnier buildings and add more high variations to really give a sense of magnitude.

then a little bit of tweaks and I was done. at this point I only had 2 days left for rendering so I had to render in any way I could I try to show as much as possible so in the process I got some noise from the light, especially on the iron base that supports the lighthouse.