After being split into our groups, we decided to brain storm ideas about our realm. From the get-go, we were quite enamored with the idea of having a cute aesthetic. Though we were told to branch out and consider other themes, the idea of using more adorable fairies appealed to us the most. With that, we began looking for references.
We liked the idea of using more rounded shapes that have a more cartoon art style – something reminiscent of Tinkerbell and the game Calico. Rounded shapes made the environment look more friendly and inviting while maintaining a sense of magic.
Drawing more inspiration from Tinker Bell, we quite liked the idea of putting a tree in the center of the environment. We also preferred to use more simplistic shapes for trees, as we did want a low poly look for our environment.
We toyed giving the flowers faces and expressions, like in Alice in Wonderland, perhaps giving them animations that loop as you walk around the world. However, this fell low on our list of priorities for the scene, and as such we didn’t really consider it much when we began modelling.
We looked at some references from the movie Strange Magic as well, as we began thinking at how the fairies might live in our scene. What sort of houses do they live in? What is there furniture like? We began considering these aspects of our scene as we wanted some sort of world building to be evident. We did like the idea of the fairies living in relics of human objects, like bottles, and so, we decided to have them live in tea cups and pots. Perhaps the tea supplies are remnants of an old family who left them behind, or from a factory. However, we didn’t want to focus on the how’s and why’s too much – this wasn’t the main focus of our scene, figuring we could ask the viewer to suspend disbelief for sake of aesthetic.
For colour theme and mood, we looked to an array of different sources, such as Ill Mheg from Final Fantasy XIV, Ballonlea from Pokemon Sword and Shield and a number of settings from Winx Club.