[Stage] Soul Calibur 4, Jurakudai Villa, SurvivorX

SurvivorX

I'm gonna go with Soul Calibur, seeing as it's the only fighting game besides SSB:M that I know anything about. My favorite stage from SC4 would have to be Jurakudai Villa - Virgin Snow, and I'm going to rebuild it from a post-apocalyptic setting, with maybe just a touch of a "junkyard slum" flavor added to it. I'm still going to try and have the whole "outdoors training dojo" look+feel to it though.

Sadly, I can only find one picture of the stage anywhere on the internet, and some fool decided to run some sort of crazy photoshop effect over it to make it look horrible:

I'll put up a better picture if+when I can eventually find one - or get ahold of someone with a capture card to take one.

On another note, this would be my first contest, and I think this is my first post as well, so hopefully I won't be totally overwhelmed by all the amazing veterans around here

SurvivorX

This pic isn't the stage from SC4, it's the version on Soul Calibur Broken Destiny, but it's more or less the same layout from what I can tell.

The original stage looks like a martial arts training dojo, with a raised rectangular platform, but what I like specifically about it is the way it looks secluded, untouched and almost "pure". All the buildings nearby are covered with this fresh white snow, and it always gave me the image of a new beginning in my mind, with the snow wiping everything away and leaving a clean blank slate.

I want to add in a postapocalyptic bent, so I'm going to try and twist the effect of the snow, to become less of a "new beginning" and more of a "harsh, bleak wiping away of what once was beautiful". In addition, I want to make the fortress now become a remote, futuristic warzone.



There will be rubble and junk in many corners, but in orderly piles rather than ruinous heaps, as though someone pulled it aside after the disaster occurred and tried to start rebuilding.

I can't quite decide what to do with the big tree (which is a great atmospheric piece, you get the feeling it's been there for generations), whether I should keep it as is, or turn it into some sort of mutated alien tree, or a frozen ice-crystal tree, or perhaps replace it entirely with a juryrigged comm tower or similar postapocalyptic equipment.

Backstory:
Jurakudai Villa was a hidden dojo for the greatest swordsmen in eastern Asia for many centuries; a secluded, self-sufficient keep that could repel any invading force, but rarely needed to, being nestled deep in the mountains, out of the public eye. Master martial artists gathered there from the world over to practice their art and train their most promising proteges without interruption or distraction. Even as the world's technology changed, and upgraded, so too did the Villa's fortifications...but the arts being taught were passed down intact, master to student.

But when the world went to hell in a handbasket in the year 2043, the massive ice age that followed left no corner of the world untouched, not even the Villa. Those few martial artists who lived on in the villa, trained by masters and descended from legends, prepared for an onslaught. The Villa was secluded, but after hundreds of years, it was not secret – when food ran out, the survivors would come here for the Villa's extensive food and equipment stores.

SurvivorX

Quick, very rough blockout of the area with some details. I'm the sort of modeler who often strays pretty far from the original blockout though, so who knows where I'll end up :P

Briefly considered cutting open the building on the left and making the fallen roof into a bridge over to there and expand the fight area, but that would change the battlefield too extensively, it wouldn't quite be as recognizable as Jurakudai Villa.

For the record, that big blob near the roof is going to be rubble :P Still up in the air on that tree.

SurvivorX

Fixing up the blockout to not suck so bad, once it's better-fleshed out, I'll start on individual components - gonna start on the comm tower first. I looked at the map again, found some wierd standing lanterns in the little nooks off in the corners, so I'm gonna replace one of those with comm towers and the other with rubble of some kind. The tree will stay a tree, albeit maybe a frozen ice-crystally tree thingy.

S2Engine

Cool concept, looking forward to more. I'm a little unclear though on where the fighters' arena is going to be? Maybe some shots from that angle would help. Also I think you may want to change your render's environment color to something a bit lighter, the harsh black makes it hard to read what's going on in the shadow areas.