cemetery
Overview
Stylized fantasy cemetery set in a night time environment.
Role
Level Designer
Tools
Unreal Engine 4, Adobe After Effects
Skills
Level Design, Set Dressing, Landscape, Composition
As I found myself with some free time over the holiday weekend, I found this super cool cemetery asset set on the Unreal marketplace and was instantly inspired to make a graveyard or cemetery scene with it. I wanted to really focus on this sort of dilapidated or stylized scene with a lot of moody atmosphere and music. I also wanted to use my design and set dressing knowledge to help show a small area that might use lighting and environment to help lead a player to their quest location or possibly some other location of interest or importance. My main sources of inspiration were areas of World of Warcraft such as Tirisfal Glades as well as the Diablo series. Shown below is a sample video of the environment!
Shown below is some documentation photos of the various stages of progression as I went about creating the level environment. This environment had a bit less planning than I usually like to do as the intent of my design was to make the cemetery look quite unorganized and run down as if it had undergone multiple changes over decades.
Finally, listed below is some detail shots of the various points of interest in the level. I like to use groups of props to contribute to indirect storytelling throughout the level. This helps to provide the player clues about the intended world building in a development or design process. This allows players to use small bits of focus in the level to craft their own history of the environment in their head, supplementing the main storyline or that of their character.
For instance in some of the detailed shots below you can see an area being dug up and lit by hanging lanterns in the tree above it, the inclusion of a detail like this might be inspired by an enemy or boss being dug up from the ground and used in the area.
Additionally, in the very first image, you can see how I attempted to use branches and elevation in the landscape to create a sight line towards the glowing tomb from the intro portion of the environment. This can be important for suggesting a direction for the player to follow, without directly railroading them towards an area.
