Games Art - Plaza Piece

After getting some critique for my previous city piece I decided it would be best to use that image as a learning curve and leave that as is while starting a new image. One of the issues with the original image I wanted to bear in mind was the perspective. In the previous artwork the perspective felt very forced with a very wide and dramatic angle. I decided the best way to avoid that from happening this time was to do a quick mock up 3d model in maya and then overpaint it. This method would allow me to produce rendered screens with correct perspective and would help cut down on mistakes. I have chosen to do a market scene or plaza as it were. This will act as the center anchor of the city with an element within to be made into a model sheet.

Model screenshot

Once I had the screen shot I started putting in rough colours and trying to build up a snowy city feel. I wanted to avoid photos at this point in time as I wanted to try focus on values and not get bogged down in the details of a particular area. I decided that instead of a large obelisk-esk element, in the middle of the square, that I would make a statue of one of the demon deities. As this is a demon city. This started giving me ideas for maybe developing a festival like feel. Similar to Sung  Choi's dragon festival image.

And so I started trying to add some colour in to get a more festive like feel using tent like cloth and an emphasis on the market. I then introduced some foreground elements such as the sign and the dog and tried to section the image using shadows. But it still needed more.

I added more festival elements such as the dragon and stilt walker along with some watching children to try fill up the image some more as well as removing the yellow cloth as it obstructed the image a bit too much. Furthermore I tried to fill out the background some more.

At this current stage I feel the image is a bit too cluttered with no clear focus. I think the best way to approach this is too leave this piece of a bit and get to work on the model sheet of the dragon costume for now. Then come back to this and use shadows and light to pull our elements more and try and direct the eye to the correct locations.