Amy Flanagan - Environment Art - A Palette of themes

First Project: Octo-Bar

Inspiration, Direction & Reflection

The goal for this project was to focus on lighting, especially interior lighting. It ended up being quite an obscure lighting direction however I am really pleased with the end product! It was my first time decorating & creating assets for an interior space as well as working with interior lighting.  I've had a lot of help due to feedback along the way. I'm so thankful for the time and effort people put into the feedback they have given, I've learnt so much from them all and I wouldn't have gotten this end result with it.

The concept was originally inspired from Alex Sayers entry for the Neo Tokyo ArtStation Challenge and I was inspired by Nina Kloss's aquatic art work. From these two, I ended up with this quirky project.

Original Concept & Inspiration:

Alex Sayer
Nina Klos

Asset Bundle:

I did many iterations of lighting as I was trying to learn and understand how it works in the Unreal Engine. There was a lot of back and forth and this is where asking for feedback really pays off. The amount of feedback I received really helped me get the lighting to a comfortable spot where I can play with the overall colour palate. I got a very basic idea of what I wanted the lighting to look like within the blockout phase but then when it came to learning more, it changed overtime.

Overall, I really have enjoyed working on this project and I feel like I have learnt so much about lighting during the creation process. I knew it was something that I needed to work on and I tried my best to learn as much as possible about how lighting works in engine as well as how it can affect the models I create. I wanted to implement as many fish elements as I could in the scene and I think this project reflects my creativity well. 

Second Project: Peaceful Grave

Inspiration, Direction and Reflection

This is a project that I thoroughly enjoyed making. There were a few times where I went back and forth with design decisions however I'm over the moon with the final outcome! I knew I wanted to make a rex skull for sure, so I generated a whole project around it! I also wanted to work on skills such as vegetation, rocks and composition. I tried to keep the asset list to a minimum and think of creative ways to reuse them as much as possible.

This piece was inspired by Elden Ring's Haligtree area. The opposing themes of the abundance of life amongst death really interested me in the game, therefore I wanted to create a similar environment of this rex's grave being not a grim, horrid place but, a place that conflicts that. A place of beauty, peace but also sorrow. The soft warmth in the tones of the scene symbolises calmness and optimism for life to still flourish here even amongst this dimly lit grave. Maybe a time ago it was a grim place.

Inspired by 
Original Artist https://www.artstation.com/artwork/mwYo8

Fan Art in realtime: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/14VaPL

Above are the design decisions behind why I chose the assets that I have made and references I have used to create them. I have also considered what the overall colour palette I wanted for the scene so I could achieve that Haligtree warm tone across my work.

Asset Overview

Here is a brief overview of all the assets I made to make the environment. The goal for this project was to create my first world environment, I had never made organic/non-man made props yet so I wanted to explore that side of modelling. It was a task to learn and understand what looks effective and natural and what doesn't, along with beginning to understand how certain materials work in engine, this being sub-surface materials like the leaves on the vines. Furthermore, I wanted to work with zBrush some more and see how that works with baking in substance painter as I didn't do a lot of that in my very first project.

Third Project: Buried Trials

Inspiration, Direction and Reflection

I was inspired by my home town's secret of there being a buried street near the beach. When walking around the area there are plaques with photos of what it used to look like before they modernised it. I thought this would make such an interesting game environment and pairing that up with the local folklore of the Pendle Hill witches, I have myself a story filled environment that was waiting to be created!
I really wanted the village to seem like it was alive but yet empty, therefore I had the idea of curving the buildings inwards over the player to remind them that are in an enclosed space. Also, this gives the buildings some personality in comparison to them being their normal shape.

This was my project of many firsts and it was such a huge learning curve, I thoroughly enjoyed making this project as this was the start of figuring out how far I can push myself and my creativity. Before this, I hadn't used Unreal before but also I was new to using software such as substance painter and zBrush. 

Asset Bundle:

Here is a brief look into my assets that I have created for this environment. I also wanted to show a little bit of the thought process behind coming up with this idea. I knew what kind of style of buildings and time period to go for due to the reference of my home town and when they buried the original street. I also wanted to make sure that I incorporated fun and interesting ideas of how things functioned below; such as, the hanging lanterns on the ceiling have exposed wires as they are hooked up to the world's above electricity. 

We have a process view of blocking out and working with lighting to the finished project and a comparison of the lighting that I did after I got some feedback on the project. I realise now looking at the old renders how monotone the overall scene is. The overall brown tone didn't add anything to the overall atmosphere that I was going for and it felt like it was too much so nothing was really standing out.
The blue tones and mist that I added to the scene has drastically changed what it looks like. The overall atmosphere now fits with the theme that I was going for and I think it adds a lot more depth to it. 

Here are two tileable materials that I made in substance designer. It was a huge learning curve trying to understand how to effectively create materials. Both of these materials were used on the modular building kit that I made and I'm really thankful for FastTrack tutorials for the walkthrough and break down process on how to create materials like these.

Showreel of projects

Thankyou!

Thankyou so much for reading through my post! It's a lot to digest, however I am really happy with what I have learnt during each and every process of creating the projects. I hope you like the finished products as much as I do and I can't wait to work on my next one!