Floating Island Ruins:
A floating stone pier in the sky, inspired by a dream and Greco-roman ruins.
A Dream, Sketches, and Base Models:
Several years ago, when I first began my art journey, I had a strange dream about floating ruins in the sky. The ruins themselves looked Greco-Roman, and shared traits with an old stone pier. To this day I vividly remember this dream. When looking for something to build, I was drawn back to this dream.
I began with recreating a sketch found in one of my old sketchbooks. Then, I researched old greek and roman architecture to use as reference while building. I found building the models to be the easiest task. I textured the models in Substance Painter, while hand painting moss textures onto the floating islands.
Lighting in Unreal Engine:
I found lighting the scene in Unreal Engine to be the most daunting challenge. The lighting simply wouldn't turn out as I had hoped. I had aimed for a daylight, morning scene, but instead found myself creating a dusk scene. In the end, I embraced the dusk scene, as it was a rare time of day I tend to illustrate. By embracing the dusk scene, I found myself challenging my own reasoning as an artist to avoid dusk or times of night in modeled scenes and illustrations.
Final Render:
