The Crystal Pearl
2020/2021
Type of project/game: 3D Environment / Environmental storytelling Project duration: 20 weeks Target Audience: Casual and non-gamers between the age of 20 and 27 Creator(s): Kyra van den Dries - Artist Nuriya Bouwman - Artist Juliëtte Korthals Altes - Audio My role: Concept artist, 3D environmental artist, level designer, technical artist (lighting, shaders) |
Trailer The Crystal Pearl
|
About the project
This project consisted out of 20 weeks and ran from September 2020 until the last week of January 2021.
The goal of the project was to make a 3D environment in Unreal Engine with a focus on environmental storytelling in 3D game art, where we wanted to evoke wonder in people.
Over the summer of 2020, Kyra and I were both playing with the idea of creating a 3D environment without the "pressure" of finishing a game so we would have more time to explore new things and experiment with our art. We decided to join forces and create a 3D environment with the two of us.
The Story
The Crystal Pearl is a surreal 3D environment inspired by a Chinese fairytale, where the viewer can step into the old tale through visual storytelling.
We started the concept phase by looking for esthetics we liked from different cultures. We picked 3 of the esthetics/cultures we liked most and read some of the fairytales from those. In the end we picked the story of the Crystal Pearl about a young man that wanted to know if the dirty lake near his town had a connection to their poverty. He travelled toward the wise man in the west and met a few people with their own questions along the way.
In our environment we created 5 areas that each represented a part of the fairytale.
Scope wise we had to choose between working out 1 of those areas in full detail or work out the whole environment in less detail. It was a bit ambitious, but we chose to do the last thing, because during our playtest we noticed that people didn't understand the story well when 1 area looked a lot better than the others and the environmental storytelling part of our project stood at the center of it.
My part
During the project we split most of the work between the 2 of us. We both worked on concept sketches, we decided the stylized style together and we both worked on 3D models and shaders.
The objects I specifically made are:
Town area: Half of the houses in the town, the orange barrels, lanterns and gates.
Wedding area: the gazebo and lanterns
Orange area: the gate, the groundplane, the floating vase and lanterns
Dragon area: the gate, lanterns and bridge
The palace area: The Palace and the shader that makes it float up and down, the lanterns and the boat.
This project consisted out of 20 weeks and ran from September 2020 until the last week of January 2021.
The goal of the project was to make a 3D environment in Unreal Engine with a focus on environmental storytelling in 3D game art, where we wanted to evoke wonder in people.
Over the summer of 2020, Kyra and I were both playing with the idea of creating a 3D environment without the "pressure" of finishing a game so we would have more time to explore new things and experiment with our art. We decided to join forces and create a 3D environment with the two of us.
The Story
The Crystal Pearl is a surreal 3D environment inspired by a Chinese fairytale, where the viewer can step into the old tale through visual storytelling.
We started the concept phase by looking for esthetics we liked from different cultures. We picked 3 of the esthetics/cultures we liked most and read some of the fairytales from those. In the end we picked the story of the Crystal Pearl about a young man that wanted to know if the dirty lake near his town had a connection to their poverty. He travelled toward the wise man in the west and met a few people with their own questions along the way.
In our environment we created 5 areas that each represented a part of the fairytale.
Scope wise we had to choose between working out 1 of those areas in full detail or work out the whole environment in less detail. It was a bit ambitious, but we chose to do the last thing, because during our playtest we noticed that people didn't understand the story well when 1 area looked a lot better than the others and the environmental storytelling part of our project stood at the center of it.
My part
During the project we split most of the work between the 2 of us. We both worked on concept sketches, we decided the stylized style together and we both worked on 3D models and shaders.
The objects I specifically made are:
Town area: Half of the houses in the town, the orange barrels, lanterns and gates.
Wedding area: the gazebo and lanterns
Orange area: the gate, the groundplane, the floating vase and lanterns
Dragon area: the gate, lanterns and bridge
The palace area: The Palace and the shader that makes it float up and down, the lanterns and the boat.
Final In Game Screenshots
Concept sketches
Blockouts
In Game Screenshot v.1
Talk: The Crystal Pearl - The perks of pre-production
|
Q&A session - The Crystal Pearl
|