Mini Europe

Mini Europe is my first experience with 3D project, which is for an assignment. It is an imaginary island locating on the back of a giant swan in the middle of the sea. There are different kinds of fruits and plants on it.

 

The idea was inspired by my first trip to Europe. As I come from a tropical country, I was mesmerized by various new plants, flowers and fruits. Especially when I visited the countryside, all the colourful gardens and magnificent mountains were so amazing. Hence, I captured different natural creatures there and I wanted to recreate a world from my collection. Another inspiration was Zou Island in One Piece manga. It is an island on the back of a thousand-year old elephant. Placing the island on the back of a moving animal evokes adventurous and wanderlust feeling. Moreover, elegant swans are usually associated to Europe so it was chosen to be the animal carrying the island.

 

My vision was to build a magical and explorable environment for users to walk around, discover different features and enjoy the atmosphere. Hence, all the creatures and terrains are designed based on the real one but added some extraordinary characteristics. The colour palette and sound were dynamic to express my concept.

 

Since many games have successfully created very realistic environments, I want to distinguish my work by using my own illustration style. My island looks more like a painting than real world. Therefore, the most important and challenging step was creating the texture. During my experiment process, although the drawings looked nice on 2D, they did not work well on 3D because they were stretched. My final choice, using several lines to create the texture, looked well on different surfaces of 3D models. This kind of texture not only appeared similar to the original 2D drawing but also created interesting visual when it was distorted.

 

With this island, I have captured my own journey, combined it with my artistic style to share with all players my experience. I hope they will find it enjoyable.