Environment Concept Practice

Before undertaking the Sony Masterclass project, I thought it might be a good idea to rough out some environment concepts so that I didn't make any rookie errors in the actual piece. I'd never tried to sketch environments before this so I headed over to Feng Zhu's site artbyfeng.com for some help. I remembered Feng from a Gnomon Tutorial that someone had given me once. He's a concept God and is gracious enough to upload nearly 50 in depth tutorials on his site which proved invaluable.

The first concept was supposed to be some sort of futuristic temple in a desert environment. I had fun sketching it out but the values didn't really translate once it was coloured.

For the second I used a technique outlined in one of Feng Zhu's tutorials, in which he uses stock images to help quickly texture a surface. Admittedly I got a little carried away with the images and veered more toward a matte painting style but it was definitely a good exercise.