Spaghetti Western town (Weeks 1 to 6)

Our main project this semester is to create a world, and render it in real time. We are going to use Unreal Engine 4 at the end, but for now we are simply creating the world in Maya and 2D brainstorming. I started by compiling a Pinterest ideas board. As I was assigned to the wild west spaghetti town, I compiled everything to do with the wild west and some stylized drawings and art, related to the topic in hand.

I started blocking out the rough layout/idea/concept of the town right away in Blender, as I am quite awful at concept art, and have no real confidence in my 2D art anymore.

Our idea is to build a little western town on a lake, with an elevated railway viaduct passing by over, by the shore, and a district of the town built on stilts, inspired by the real life town of Ketchikan, Alaska, and a town from Skyrim the video game. Our main inspiration for the town itself is Red Dead Redemption 2, Fallout New Vegas, and other video game projects. Our main inspiration for the aesthetic is this art piece by Syntetyc on Deviantart

We then started working on our assigned buildings, we use Discord to communicate, show our progress to each other and assign tasks.

I started by creating the church of the town. I want the church to be the main feature of the town, as it is the place that brings everyone together in a rural community. (And he saloon/pub, of course) I used textures from textures.com and took inspiration from St. Anna's cathedral in my home town.

Next up: I worked on the town hall for a bit, and created a brass era horseless carriage, based on a vehicle asset I had made for a personal project before, just by making some minor changes.

And here is a quick example of my colleagues' work as well: James is focusing on the native american tribe settlement

This is our work so far, we will start figuring out Unreal Engine soon, I already had a really small, quick explore earlier this year, but I need to dive into it more seriously. In my next update on this project I will definitely have some updates on that too!