Tags: Art
This art piece is made to showcase a desert city. The protagonist of the game travels here after traversing the desert with a group of bedouins. They traverse the Sandstorm and eventually reach this city. Despite its shimmering exterior, a looming threat approaches upon the horizon. The protagonist must help defend the city from a hostile invading army of monsters.
The goal of this project was to establish an architectural style and overall look for the desert themed biome in a 2D action adventure game. This concept art piece was able to give the artists a sense of what kind of buildings needed to be created for the game.
In terms of references used for the architectural artstyle, the layout was very much reminiscant of Gondor from the Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings films. The city itself is a combination of real-world Morocco and the fictional Alamut from the Prince of Persia series. The outer wall and outer city is influenced by Morocco with their square-shaped buildings. While the inner city features the iconic minaret shaped buildings. The buildings themselves are embroided with an emerald like stone that glistens in the sun light. The buildings also have a blue colored banner.
The red flags seen on the outside leading up and into the city are used as markers to guide travelers to the city through even the worst of sandstorms. This was an idea that I got from Gerudo Desert in Ocarina of Time.
The structures to the left of the city are subterrainian wells that allows the desert inhabitants to extract a constant underground water source.
When I first made the art piece, it didn’t look quite the same as the one you currently see.
Here is a comparison, with the old one on the left and the new iteration on the right:
List of changes:
- Mountains have been given atmospheric fog
- No more flat colors, instead of using high contrast two color scheme, now used a 4-color scheme for each group of buildings.
- Lighting FX, rays being cast down on the central part of the city
- More of the well structures on the left
- Texture has been added to all the buildings
- Fixed shading on mountains and buildings
- Added minor subtle changes to the protagonist and magi