Next Project. Starting point

For the starting point of my next project I decided to redesign one of the dark souls 2 location. Its hub Majula. But it is important to note that the end result might be far from the starting point and it might not even be fair to call it redesign then. But it is not important.

 I feel like redesigning existing location will give me restrains and a sense of direction I needed. Overall, I find it hard to create an environment. I like working on models, materials and level, but it is hard to bring that all up together to create a cohesive whole. I think I might have not given myself enough guidelines in the past and the structure of my work wasn't the best. I’ll try to fix that with this project. 

Dark souls 2 left me with a lot of disappointment and made me think of ways I would improve it if I had an opportunity. There were lots of environments I could choose for this exercise, but I decide it would be the best to focus on its hub. Majula is the central part of ds2 game world that leads to other areas. It is directly tied in with player progression (levelling up, upgrading gear) so it is visited more often than any other area in the game. It represents whole game, the key design decisions, aesthetic, philosophies. But for the location of this importance it's lacking in many respects in my opinion.

 

Let’s compare it to locations that had the same role in other entries to the souls’ series.

Hubs in other games have a much stronger aesthetic. Their use of colours and contrast values creates more intriguing environments.

They have much more interesting level designs, that focus a lot on verticality. On the contrary Majula is flat.

The use of monumental structure makes other hubs look more significant, it leaves a stronger impression on the player. Majula looks bland an uninteresting. Of course an argument could be made that it was an international decision. And in all fairness it probably was. But I can't say it was a right call.

Redesign process:

I decided to start with finding a proper mood for the location I would like to design. For a time of day I've chosen morning. This won’t only influence the colour palate or mood of the location, but also add to subtext. A morning could mean the beginning of the journey, the hope, energy, fitting themes for one of the first area in the game and one players use for the rest.
But mornings can differ a lot depending on weather conditions. So I gather reference photos and created few scenes that represent different types of morning weather and different atmospheres.

So to bring some order to my work I'll make a schedule and try to follow it!

Week 1-2 - Concept art, sketches

Week 3-4 - Design, blockmap 

Week 5 - big assets, materials

Week 6 - props

Week 7- onwards - building environment in engine.