Japanese background

Project I did for Videogame Backgrounds class. We had to think the genre, the kind of view that the player would hace (if it’s a first-person or a third-person game) and what the story would be about. In my case, the genre I chose was Horror/Suspense and it would be a third-person game. And about the story behind it, I thought it could be settled in a little village located in Kyoto, where some suspicious and mysterious disappearances have ocurred. Our main character (aka the character the player would use to move around the different settings and rooms) purposely goes to that place to find out what’s happening in that village. Are they paranormal events? Are the villagers involved? Or maybe both?

For this background I did a bit of investigation of items that are common in spiritual events or rituals in Japanese village, some traditional and iconic elements in the Japanese culture like the Kitsune statues (that are usually near or in zones where there are temples, and they are also linked with spirituality and they think about the fox/kitsune like a sacred animal) and also different images of Japanese places to think about the environment like mountains, woods and forests, places with toriis… and not only searched for inspiration from real images, I also thought of horror/suspense animes and even donghuas (chinese anime). About the kind of light, I chose that it would be like at dawn to give it a kind a suspense vibe, as at night it’s usually when it’s supposed to happen more paranormal activity, like it would be the calm-not-so-calm before the storm vibe. Anótese idea I had was that in the “game”, the Kitsune statues would be like a Save Point, as they are supposed to be creatures that protect people from demonic events or yokais (in Japanese culture, yokais are fantastic creatures and monsters, there are different kinds of yokai, some more naughty and others directly evil), so that the player could regain some life points and even save in the game when they interact with one of these statues. I did 3 different thumbnails but stack with the second one as I thought the composition in it was interesting (the way the mountains do like a V shape for example) even though the first one had more “definition” and find it interesting too, but I could imagine better the lights (the first one I could only think about a night light, but the second one gave me more flexibility as it could be night, dawn, morning even though it would be more difficult to give a hint that it was a horror/suspense game), how the character would move in the screen…

I've put all the process, from the research of references to final design, including rough thumbnails, the thumbnail I chose at the end, and different final designs with different lights around the kitsune statue and without any kind of magic light.

Hope you all like it!