#1 - Project Outline

Over the next few months I will be making a series of posts documenting my process and experiments with building a stylised exterior environment.

From now until January I will be working on Pre-Production, focusing on the design of the environment, along with learning and experimenting with some of the tools and techniques I hope to apply. 

Opposed to other projects I have worked on, an exterior will require me to develop skills that are currently outside of my comfort zone. I will also need to take into account some of the inherent challenges with this type and style of environment. Some of these challenges include:

• Landscape creation and materials. I'd like the scene to have a dynamic backdrop, so finding an efficient way to create this will take some experimentation.
• Foliage creation, like grass cards, and trees. I need to learn how to produce these assets, and how to set up materials for them.
• Sculpting and texturing stylised and painterly assets. I am used to texturing and creating PBR materials for more realistic assets. Digital painting isn't my strongest skill, so finding ways to create these effects more procedurally will be a big help.
• Controlling the scope. With the scene being so open, blocking sightlines and defining the borders of the scene could prove difficult.
• Organic assets such as plants, trees, and rocks, will be required to fill out the environment. Besides learning how to make these assets, just building and refining these assets could take some time. Finding ways to make a smaller number of these assets go further will be important.

To summarise the plan:

• I intend to create a stylised exterior environment.
• The focus of the scene will be the foliage, landscape, and a single focal-point building.
• The building will be some sort of isolated dwelling.
• As a more personal building, I am hoping to include elements of environmental storytelling, delving into the lives of who lives there, hinting at what they are like, and what they do for a living.

The landscape surrounding the house should also be dynamic and interesting in its own right:

• Trees shedding leaves, windswept grass, and bright, colourful foliage, all add colour and movement to the scene. The trees aid composition by framing and blocking sight lines.
• A river flowing through the scene splits the foreground and background, and adds movement and sound.
• Vast mountains in the background help to add a sense of scale with the world as a whole.
• The suggestion of other buildings in the far distance also add to this sense of scale.