Diorama: The Saga to the right shape

It's been two weeks and I am already redoing things. I had this first idea and I thought It was great! Until I realised It wasn't. I had this rounded base that looked like a sink, and all my elements were around it, leaving an open area in the middle. I thought It would look like a square, but at the end, I couldn't see anything properly, and It really looked bad.

Also, I had some feedback and I realised It would look a lot better If I focused on doing something vertical instead of a flat base. This idea was actually great because I immediatly thought about doing something with levels and that could maybe resemble the Glastonbury Tor!

The Glastonbury Tor, according to the Avalon Series written by Marion Zimmer Bradley, was a path for rituals and worship, and also, a portal to another world. I thought about making something like a path, leading to a henge of stones, or maybe a path made of stones.

After redoing the shape around three times on 3ds Max, I finally had a sillouette I really liked and could work properly. Here are some sketches I had and the final one is the last.

I don't have the first models because I deleted everything when on a rampage. The first couple of times were very frustrating, because I could swear they would turn out great, and they didn't.

At the end, I had modelled all the elements without actually having a proper sketch with base colours, but that was because of the short time I have to finish everything, since I wouldn't be able to work between 30 of December until 9 of January, so I have to have everything ready before, and this is being a nightmare. I know I should have done palettes studies and I'm really looking foward to the next project to make something complete from beginning to the end of the process.

After I had everything modelled, It was time to start making the textures. And I am going to tell you. This is the worst part for me, even worst than unwrapping everything. I was sitting in front of Photoshop just wondering how the hell I could make a grass texture, and I took a lot longer than It was supposed to: I had a lot of references but I just didn't know how to start. At the end, It looked okay I guess? The perks of being terrible at digital painting.

Also, for the rock texture, I did wanted to create something alternative for the common grey thing. From the references I had from WoW, I chose to work with some psycodelic purple rock, mainly because It reminded me of something mystical, and that is the feeling I am going for.

At the end of my journey through texture hell, I had all the elements I needed!