Was given a brief set by Steven Coltart the Course Leader at my university to create a landscape based on a song he composed. I started with some thumbnail sketches which I developed further that then became the final outcome.
Working in games can feel overwhelming during periods of increased workload, and one way I have personally found to not only keep a positive mental wellbeing, but also inspire creative ideas is to go for walks in nature. This was especially important to me during the lockdowns, where around my projects I composed a personal album entitled ‘Lifeline’. SIOW and I would like you to use one of the tracks ‘With Nature’ as the influence/ inspiration behind your art or game. The positivity, importance, beauty, emotional power of nature is what we want to shine through. You can listen to the track via the link below, and you will also be provided with a loopable .wav for in-game use (please note that the music rights are granted just for use on this project).
https://open.spotify.com/track/777srCU7uq1M2wYnPmOUmC?si=017da8ca6de34ddd

I started this project, with a mind map of my initial thoughts of the song and I thought that I could hear some kind of water trickling as well as the rhythm of the main melody itself sounding like water, so thought that the landscape should have a body of water as the main focus. So, I gathered some reference photos of waterfalls and lakes. I also thought the string section sounded like a gentle breeze and could be portrayed through floating leaves or grass. I also thought the reverb and delay added a somewhat mystical/supernatural element to what would be in the landscape.

I started with some thumbnail sketches and photo references I gathered on PureRef.

I then developed some of these thumbnails a bit further. I started adding colour to one and a bit more detail, some feed back I recieved at this point was to add a figure and something to the top left of the image, so I added some more floating islands surrounded by some clouds.