Tree Styles – Workshop

One of the first tasks was to download premade, ready to texture models of trees, where we choose one that interests us and begin considering the design pipeline.

Out of the three, I was mostly interested by the fir tree; while the shapes are sharp, they can be easily rounded if the design calls for it, but the tree mesh itself can be interpreted in many ways, whereas the other 2 in my opinion may be more limited to toony and cute (for the 1st) or sci-fi or fairy-ish (the 3rd).

One of the things we were asked to consider first was the emotion, “What kind of emotional response is this style trying to convey? Is it meant to be calm, disturbing, exciting, “cute”, etc.”, I wanted to try a creepy, desolate vibe with this tree! That would mean keeping the sharp edges, with sharp and contrasting textures. However, while I wanted it to be creepy, I also wanted it to seem desolate, calm, or sad; meaning my colours should be of a blue hue, but quite desaturated. The bark, when looking at real winter fir trees, is quite dark and grey-ish, and the pines are almost teal. I didn’t want to texture this tree as if it was in a well lit, sunny area during winter but deep in a forest during the evening.

“Are there any clear rules that define the art style I’m going for? for example: ink lines, two tone color, gradients. soft pastel colors or very saturated colors? paint strokes etc. try to break down the style into as many little bits of information as possible that can inform your texturing. Think about the style as a whole at this stage not just the texture.”

I was very drawn to the art style of the game ‘Don’t Starve’, it has a very unique and charming scribble look, with dark lines and clear cell shading. I particularly like the desaturated colours and subtle gradients. For my own test, I wanted to use the teal green and pale mossy colours for the pines from the Don’t Starve references. I don’t want a lot of snow, just around the edges, and I’ll have that as a blue/beige colour so as it’s not overly bright. The snow may also be reflective. All of the paint strokes will be hard, but kind of painterly, maybe using square brushes or cloudy texture brushes.