Once I had a looked at some unrelated 2D environment art pieces for inspiration for lighting and composition in my designs, I moves onto looking into the specific area we were focusing on for the Concept Pre-Visualisation Art Test. I began to research into the different environments that have been featured throughout the series of Fable games to make sure that I got a broad range of designs and concept to work off of. So I started off at the beginning of the process, finding images of hand drawn environment concept pieces for Fable. After scrolling through Google images I found a collection of sketches that I knew were going to help me capture the feel of what the buildings were like throughout the game so I chucked them into a mood board, as seen bellow.
It was really nice to find these initial concept art sketches as it gives you a very clear example of what the style of the game and environments are from earlier on in the process. It was really good to find some clear and detailed images of the different homes and shops found in Fable as the buildings will essentially be the building blocks of the concept art I will be making. Structures such as buildings help bulk up an environment and change it into a different area, so for example having one building shows that its a remote, quiet area but having 5 - 10 shows a snapshot of possibly a large town or city.
The first thing thing that stood out to me when I looked at these sketches was the styling used and the perspective of the buildings drawn. Everything about them fits snugly into the cartoonist unrealistic style that Fable possesses, making the buildings look like they almost have life of their own. The structures all look very top heavy and chunky but none of them are made up of straight lines of perfect symmetry. Each building looks a tad wonky, as if it is slightly leaning over to the side which could be showing an example of how older structure warp and shift in time but I believe it is focusing more on the cartoonish style so this aspect is more to give the buildings more character than to do with anything logical. This is a good news to me as it means that means that my lines and perspective don't have to be deadly perfect which is something I usually struggle with when drawing structures but I must still consider things like sizing and how the buildings is going to work with the objects around it. These are really nice sketches to work with for inspiration and I think they will really help me to capture Fable's art style and feel.
Once I had done some image research into 2D environment concept art I soon moved into looking at what the environments actually looked like in game and how they translated from sketch to a 3D model. I made sure to look at levels from each of the different games in the series to make sure I was getting a full variety of the different designs used. I really loved looking at the different in game snap shots as their is a some really beautiful uses of lighting used throughout the game which gives each environment a different warm feeling. I chose a selection of my favourite environments and made up a mood board which can be seen in the image below. Even though this Art Test is 2D based and shouldn't be focused on any 3D concepts, these images were really helpful to look at they have given me a lot of inspiration for examples of colour and composition that have been used in the different areas of Fable which will hopefully translate in my three final pieces of concept art.
I also decided it would be a good idea to see some video footage of the environments when in game as it would help me see another aspect to the designs instead of just 2D image inspiration. After a little browsing I managed to find a few videos on exactly the sort of thing I was looking for which were really helpful to watch. Again these were really helpful to look our for a clearer idea of the different composition and layout each area had which will hopefully translate into the work I complete. The videos I found and watched for research, I have posted below.
Now that I have done a fair bit of research into the 'Fable' series of games and have also looked into different types of 2D environment concept art for inspiration on lighting and composition I believe i ma ready to move onto different areas of the brief. One of these will be looking into the possible different fractions could be included in the game and what influence they would have on the environment which is something that is mentioned on the brief that we should look into. Secondly I could look at some photography to do with the different seasons to branch out my options of different setting in my concept art along with what time of the day it is set it which will included look at photography of night and day. This will also help my get the right lighting and feel for the scene depending on what I am trying to create. Accompanied by this image research I can start off completing my thumbnail sketches so I can really get the ball rolling with the designing part of the Art Test.
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