Behind the Scenes: Island in the Sky (Patreon)

An idea can hit you at anytime you're doing something. Like playing a game. You're sitting back, all chilled-out and relaxed and all of a sudden your creative part just kicks in and your rest is over.

I was playing a Spyro game with my son and every time we do that, I can't just simply enjoy the game. I find myself always stopping to ponder about their hand-painted textures, the vistas and how everything is stylized and well-blended.

It's just a visual stylized masterpiece. And it can be very inspiring in terms of the environment and level design. I especially like some of the floating islands areas, so this time I thought I will give it a spin in Blender.

Visit the full Pinboard here

I didn't simply want to copy any particular area from Spyro, so I went and created a Pinterest board to gather all I can found with some floating fantasy islands. 

While at it, I occasionally threw in some image I liked as a style or mood reference. Like some of the alien planet themed sky renders, with planets and stars in the background. I thought it would be cool to combine with and island scene.

What I do next is to focus on some details and crop some of the images in editor to create a palette of details I can rely on while building the composition.

It comes handy right from the start when I do my sketch. This time, I felt a bit lazy, so I went with the iPad sketching instead of the pencil. Makes it easier and more forgiving to just throw ideas around and then move around, edit in layers, re-scale or re-draw.

But the pencil on paper has some charm too. Since it's not so forgiving, it forces you to think just a tiny bit more before drawing lines, so it helps you massage that creative grey matter. As with everything, a lot of nice things can come out of working with restrictions. The choice is yours.

I sketched some layered island shapes, interlacing the rocky areas with grass, making the leaves and grass blades chunky and stylized. One of the reference images had a medieval-style tower, so I tried to combine the classic tower look with a simple cottage.

The result was like a tiny little personal castle, hidden in the foreign sky, a silent retreat for you and your thougths.

You can watch the process video on Youtube.