For this project in my Digital Design Aesthetics course, my goal was to create a game concept and then create six digital sketches to further develop the idea.

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To create the initial idea, each of us shared something significant that happened to us in the past six months, and then another classmate would take our stories and "twist" them into a game idea.

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My partner told us about some strange, seemingly prophetic dreams he's been having. I took his story and created a game idea where the main character gets lost in an ancient and ominous dream world that blurs the line between the dream world and reality after choosing to explore the ruins at the edge of town.

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Below are the preliminary sketches I created to help illustrate the concept. Because I want to focus on environment art, many of the sketches emphasize the ominous environment of the dream world. The structures are heavy, towering, and deep, and the lighting is dramatic, with deep shadows and strong lights. Also, I want to keep the architecture stark and minimalistic to enhance the ominous mood of the environment.

 

If I designed the environment to have ornate architecture, then it would feel "lived in," because when people live somewhere, they decorate it. They fill it with clutter. But an environment that is clearly man-made and yet has no decoration or clutter, feels abandoned. It feels empty and lonely. By keeping the architecture stark and plain, it enhances the emptiness and loneliness of the world that the player will find themselves in.