Behind The Scenes: Pirate Island
Added 2021-02-05 12:40:39 +0000 UTC
I really don't know, what I would do without my list of ideas, that I have been building over the years. It's just instant inspiration. Yes, sometimes it can be tricky if you can't really decide what to pick, but I was always able to choose something, that I would enjoy.
That's probably the main reason I could do this consistently for so long, I mostly choose based on what I enjoy, not what I think will perform on the social media. Of course, the best scenario is when you can get both, but I would always prefer what I enjoy over the trend. I think the pirate idea landed as a suggestion in comment sections several times and I always loved it, but never really got to it.
And this week, while searching for a good low poly candidate, it was an instant yes.
I went to search for a good references and after seeing some "pirate" Pinterest searches, I instantly fell in love with the idea of a skull cave in the cove. I immediately fixed on that (which is not always a good thing to do) and search more of it.
I found this beautiful physical diorama image with the shipwreck on an island and I thought it would be cool to connect these two and create something like a hidden pirate settlement on the shore.
I've gathered some more material, like foliage examples and mood images for the lighting and composition and go to work on a sketch.
It was a bit challenging to put skull and the ship all at once within a single layout so there was a bit of trial and error until a found the optimal layout. I've reserved some space for the water to clearly show that it's a part of a cove within some island and put skull and the ship on sides.
I had this idea to connect somehow the ship with the rock formations, so I drew a footbridge there. So the shipwreck serves basically as a watchtower of some sort with the functional captain's cabin and you can walk through there to a cave hideout. It always helps to give your scene a little bit of a story, so the pieces start to connect better and you immediately get some fresh ideas.
I was quite satisfied with the sketch so I jumped right into Blender and started blocking out the layout :)
