Beginning Concept Piece
This is the block out image I am starting with in photoshop. It is what the player will see when they first walk into Okolina.
I have added some basic materials to the assets I had added as a starting point.
As I want Okolina to be a dense forest setting, I found some images of trees that I could have in the background. I experimented with a few different ones, but I found that I preferred how it looked when I used darker trees than lighter trees. I also found a couple of different types of grass to add to the ground. I used the stamp tool to copy the grass to different areas. I added a path going to the main tree and one going to the other parts of the level. I also added some trees at either side in the forefront of the image, as I felt like this would give the impression that the character would be looking at this after walking through forest land.
Here I have added some cabins into the image and also some of the rocky part of the hill that resides behind the main tree.
I changed the tree to a more realistic looking tree and I found an image of an entrance that I could use for the opening to the tree. I have added the other trees in the background and the treehouses with rope walkways connecting them. I found multiple tree houses I wanted to use, I have the more hut-like ones lower, and then for the higher up ones, I found an image of a tree house with the lighting that I wanted and used the stamp tool to use that image in different parts of my picture. I experimented with which order the layers looked best (which parts should be in front or behind each other). I have also tried to blend some of the areas and layers to try and make them look more uniform. I am finding this quite difficult as blending too much seems to make the image less detailed where it has been blended, but without blending it, it is too easy to see where the different pieces don't match each other.
This is my final version of the Beginning Okolina Concept Image. I used a brush to make a layer of a light brown which I put across the whole image at about 20% opacity to try and make the different aspects look more uniform - like they are all part of the same image and not lots of different images spliced together. I think it achieves this, however it makes the colours look a bit duller.