Type: Concept art
Year: 2022 - present
This passion project 'Scenic Miniature' approaches my personal interest in landscape worlds and scenery environments, in which it recreates a series of illustrated dioramas inspired by the 'House-Tree-Person' drawing. Enthused by many of my favorite adventure games that nurture and instill such driven passion of mine, mentioning the names of Gardenscapes, Homescapes, Frisbee Forever, Plants vs Zombies 2, and Candy Crush Saga,... as many as I can remember, this project seeks to pay homage to those beautiful journeys and stories that once grew on my childhood memories blast
BackStory
It all started when I was randomly surfing through my social media on a regular day, until I saw a post showing various illustration portfolios from a Vietnamese art center named T.Art Workshop, shared on an illustration community group. I then dug deeper into what was included in those, and I could not help but feel awe-inspired by how amazing their works were. The portfolio is a project-based curriculum composed of structured exercises that mainly revolve around stylization techniques, ranging from cute characters of human figures or personified animals to everyday objects or items. Specifically, there was one particular task that I was drawn into the most, which was conceptualizing an imaginative house within a stylized scenery background.
For some reason, I find this kind of concept art intriguing and resonating with me a lot, since my major degree is Spatial Design. So, I started to look up and gather more work on scenery houses done by past T.Art students, and I love how each of those managed to capture a unique blend of imagination and visual storytelling shown through building miniature worlds on canvas. Creating stylized scenic houses allows one to explore and venture into different cultures, environments, and eras, while still being at the workspace. Hence, with new-found inspiration and interest, I have been committing to immersing myself in conceptualizing different ideas that offer a unique outlet for making each drawing an adventure, an escape from the real world into this fun vibrant world of colors and freshness.
Software Use
Normally, for many items that are much more complex and involve accurate geometrical structure in perspective, I would start off constructing the desired objects as 3D modeling in Rhino. This will then be extracted into 2D linework using the Command 'Make2D' in Rhino, to then be exported to Illustrator for shape layer separation. The object will then be colored and finished touches in Photoshop.
Above is an example step-by-step board explaining how I managed to build a Lantern Palace for my Scenic Miniature number 8 - Lantern Festival. Since the palace itself requires lots of intricate details of curves and linear geometries that resemble Asian Dynasty culture, I would have to resort to using Rhino for 3D modeling. Depending on how intricate the item is, this step is sometimes quite time-consuming and daunting at the same time. Though, it is indeed very effective when it comes to drawing in perspective view. For other elements that are less complicated, such as the door or the window, Illustrator would be a quicker choice in this case.
Objective
This project is still actively ongoing with many more ideas that are yet to come. With ideas already conceptualized in mind, I plan to have this collection complete with 15 pieces in total. This means there will remain 5 left to work on, with heaps of other places yet to be discovered. The choices are endless!
Final Outcome
#1 ice cream arctic
#2 zen tea garden
#3 city of love
#4 leprechaun trap
#5 easter bunny hills
#6 spooky forest
#7 cacti country
#8 lantern festival
#9 retro party
#10 autumn farm