UTMC - Gas Giant Harvester

metaD

Hello !

Really glad to see the concept art contest from polycount !

My theme revolves around in huge ships designed to harvest precious material from gas giant (seen some articles about diamond may rain in certain of them or funky thing like liquid helium. !)

The ships would floating in extreme environment : above huuuuge menacing spinning vortex, some really dense cloud could traverse the ship, giving interesting game-play experience (super dense fogs)

I'm working on finding some aerodynamic and modular design, here's my first thumbnails.

FirebornForm

I really like the silhouette of that last one. Space levels in UT are my all time favorites and I could see this fitting along side Hyperblast. Only question is which way it's facing-up in your thumbnail since this is space, it could be any-which-way!

Looking forward to your painted version

metaD

Here's my progress, still in thumbnails sadly. I've been doing research for aerodynamic shapes and still, keeping a facility look.


Those refinery fly upwards in less turbulent atmospheric layers to opens to gives access to spaceships and fills tanks with precious and rare elements harvested further down.

Those ring floaters are accelerator (used as jumpads) to send fuel tanks to each other platforms. They're are powered advanced laser lock technology and the pulsating force field from the platform to prevent them from drifiting and be destroyed by the huge pressure and winds of the hostile environment

(edit : seems the image was not included properly)

LandSknecht

I wouldn't fret over still being in thumbnails when they're as original and as effective as these. They exemplify an entire theme without any elaboration by words. 'This is what I should be doing' 'This is what they're looking for' were my initial thoughts, haha.

I'd say A4, B2, C1, C3, C4 are my favorites.

FirebornForm

It's been a couple weeks so that's obviously "slow progress" but speed comes with practice and mastery. Like LandSknecht says don't kick yourself over being "still in thumbnails". Just look at all of these sweet shapes youve come up with!

There's a reason why Warren said it's important to get this stage down first. I think a lot of people either skipped this stage or didn't show their thumbnails exploring the idea so much like you did here. I myself am still not that well versed in this workflow of creating tiny thumbnails. As far as concept art, Land is right this is definitely something they would want to see. 2 words Shape Language, it's been stated before that Epic wants to find cool designs and shapes for the next UT to stand out from the crowd of FPS shooters.

I definitely think you've hit that on your new thumbnail shapes they are cool and I can easily see them being UT maps. A lot of these are great and I still really like B4 but I think you've trumped yourself on these new ones and if I had to pick one it would be that last one. C4

metaD

LandSknecht :
Thanks ! C1 is, sadly, not really coherent with the overall station structure. A4 and C4 are the more close to the final design I picked.

FirebornForm :

Thanks for your precious feedback !

Well I had other projects but yeah, you definitely put a finger on one of my flaw : Being too slow.
I try my best, and I have idea to squeeze finals really fast.
I tried to stay out of game logic and think in pure aesthetic and "logic".
I asked myself those question : How it work ? What happened there ? Why it became an arena ?

I'm glad you can feels it through those thumbnails.


Enough talk, lets paint :P