The Adventures Of Hamish: Cube Land

Here's another project I challenged myself to do in a small amount of time. This time I was looking through an old sketch book of mine and found what is essentially this, but I redrew it a few times to decide on what should be included and got to work.

I started by modelling the earth and water. I had to do the water a few times because I wasn't sure how I would get the white edges. What I ended up with was one mesh with two different materials assigned to it - one more transparent than the other. I used the same Toon Shading as my previous project, but this time instead of flat colour I used abstract painterly textures. Each surface has two textures created for it - one for being lit and the other for the shade.

The sketches I did had a few different ideas and I mixed and matched to get the final arrangement of things. The skeleton arm, pipe and tree were always there, and at one stage the sign had something written on it. Towards the end I added the lily pads, ladder, grass and rocks. I had a few other things, but didn't want to overcrowd it.

I was going to smooth out the jagged edges of the ground and water, but I liked the low poly look of it. It suits the simple style (even though the smoothed version would probably have worked too) and it kind of reminds me of Nintendo 64 graphics.

I knew I didn't want the outlines, but I thought I should try them just in case. I had them on the underwater grass, but they showed up far too much so I turned those ones off. I think because the water is transparent, it messes with the perspective a bit. The ladder looks like its underwater and out of the water at the same time. I think adding one too many things can really mess things up.