During this week, we had to get started with the concept art alongside blocking things in unreal engine, alongside learning a bit of the engine itself.

Concept art

For the concept art, I first began brainstorming some concept designs for a few things around the city. Mainly a Street Lamp, a few building ideas and a futuristic transport. So, lets get started with the process.

Street Lamp

For the street lamp, I firstly began by gathering references of street lamps by using real life references to help it feel solid and a few other objects to be able to get the result I desire. I used pure ref to be able to create a moodboard of how the street lamp may look. The reason why I put grass and that electric ball will be shown and told later.

Now, It was time to do a few examples of how the lamp could look like in the finished product as I used there references on the moodboard to create a mix of lamps.

• The first one was a more circular design for a street lamp. For this one I wanted to create something simple with a slick and grounded feel to it to give the impression this lamp design could happen in the future.
• For the second one, I decided to go all out on the sci fi theme and make a the street lamp use electricity to make lighting for the scene. For its shape, I got inspired by the shape of a grass string and the electricity of the electric ball.
• The third is simply and electric ball as the source of light. The reason why I made this design was purely for aesthetic reasons .
• The last one, wanted to make two lighting source using crystals. Again this was create for the aesthetic however, I later realized it looked close to a fantasy type street lamp rather than sci fi.

After doing these designs, I ended up choosing the second lamp because it stood out the most as an interesting design compared to the others and it looked the most sci fi thing in general. This design will be passed to see how I can refine the design of the lamp.

For the next one, I wanted to create some concepts of how some of the building might look in the sci fi city. So i began doodling four building designs the could be in the background of the city. For the inspirations I looked at real life buildings like the buildings in Tokyo and Belfast alongside, a few fictional buildings like the tall and blocky building in Dread and Cyberpunk 2077.

For the first building, I wanted to start a bit simple and make it a normal looking flat with a shop attached to the building. On top of the higher building there would be a hologram to advertise anything to be able to use this asset any time we want. For the bottom building its a similar thing as well as it has a tilted billboard. I don’t like it as much, but I will revisit it.

The second building, I decide for it to be a hotel, For this one, I tried to play with the silhouette of the building to give it shape and form to it. On the right side, there is a billboard for adverts which could allow the hotel to be duplicated and allowed to have any advert it wants. One thing I would like to do with is to increase the height of the building to give it the impression of a grandiose hotel.

For the third building, wanted to make a smaller flat that had a unique shape to it. This one is more simple in nature. However, I tried to add element to it that could fit in the sci fi universe like a metal platform for the signal tower to stay on and for a ventilation system to stay on the building. This was the one building I really liked to make the design of as it looks pretty unique. I will like to definitely refine this design.

The final design is of a curved sky scraper. I really enjoyed the design of it from the thumbnail drawing so, I wanted to keep it for this background project. With it, I added a few antennas for communication and internet along side a small hologram banner to advertise anything we need to have on it. This is another design I would like to come back and refine.

Lastly, I decide to bring back the futuristic transport to this project as I feel like it has a lot of potential to enhance the scene of the sci fi world. For this I was Heavily inspired by bullet trains as they have simple and interesting design which can make them look like a rocket about to take of which is why I decided to add them into the world.

The first top design wanted to go with something streamlined by putting the body of a bullet train and by using the rocket engine on the back to make it fly. While I do like it and it feel sci fi, it feels off balance as it doesnt feel like a proper vehicle as it doesn’t have anything underneath to help it control. However, I did like the tiny legs which allow it to land on platforms.

For the second one I tried to be a bit more experimental and give it a dragon head purely for aesthetic reasons as the design reminded me of a dragon. One thing that I did like about the design is the hover pads at the bottom of the train. They look pretty interesting.

I ended up not liking some of the stuff I came up with and decided to try and experiment a bit more with a few different designs.

Overall

I really felt like I did something this week by coming up with concepts for some of the items of the world which will be present in the sci fi city. One thing I didn’t enjoy was that I didn’t do more concept art for different objects. One thing I really enjoyed was making the concept for the flying vehicle as I got to experiment with things.