Thumbnails

I started developing my environments by creating thumbnails, these are small sketches meant to focus on big shapes to brainstorm many ideas quickly. My thumbnails focused on emphasizing the sand waves and rocky environment of the desert.

Environmental Design

An environment defines everything around it, from the wildlife to the people who live in it. Which is why I started my project by developing the environment everything takes place in. I developed a desert with strong winds, which cause the sand to move like ocean waves. I thought a unique setting would make developing the animals and people within it both more interesting and more challenging.

Biomes

I used more developed thumbnails to explore biomes that may exist within the environment. Many of these were based on ocean or aquatic biomes such as kelp forests and rivers.

Environmental Artwork

Creating my environmental artwork had the largest learning curve for me. While environmental art is one of my favorite types of artwork, I don't have a lot of personal experience creating it and learning how to draw environments while working with a unique environment was difficult. I had to learn how to draw both water and sand that appeared to be moving in a still image. One day, I would love to come back to these pieces and improve them, but for the limited time I had, I'm proud of how much I improved within a short time.

The Desert

The desert is split between two large, distinct regions:

The mountains that border the desert. They're plateaus that are extremely hot wastelands at the top and sheer cliffs, which are nearly impossible to climb. These mountains are where the winds come down from, and where they're the strongest, along with the waves crashing against dangerous rocks often obscured by the sand.

And the middle of the desert. The largest region, an open and exposed place without any protection from the scorching sun and full of dangers hiding beneath the sand. Being able to read the currents and find danger before it finds you, is the difference between life and death.