Ziggurat
An abstract piece created to practice non-modeling skills like composition and revision and such. Started with the goal of making something that felt "imposing," but not necessarily scary.
The final render of the project. I'm pretty happy with this one. I feel like the imposing feeling that I started the project trying to capture came through with the fog-shrouded ziggurat in the background.
The very first thing that I started out with. Inspired by Control's Astral Plane. Felt weird but not imposing.
First revision to the project. Added a central object to draw the focus, since it can't be imposing without an imposing object. Also dropped the color in this one, since I felt it made it feel more alien / unfamiliar.
Added a gradient to the fog to make it seem like the tower was reaching out of the fog. The color and density were a bit off in this revision, but I liked the effect.
Added a second tower to fill out the background a bit (plain white background was boring) and aligned the towers with the rule of thirds guide lines to increase tension (tension is important for an imposing feeling).
Tried adding some color back into the scene. I really didn't like how this looked, so I quickly abandoned this approach.
Slight tilt to the towers to make them less perfectly straight and more unfamiliar/uncomfortable. Still a little bit of color in this scene, which I thought looked nice but made it difficult for the towers to stand out against the background.
Tilted the towers in the opposite direction to make room for a fog-shrouded ziggurat as the new focal object. I like having the focal object in the background because it makes it feel like the piece is about something bigger.
The last changes made to produce the final render involved adjusting the fog so that all the objects were visible.