Project "Castles"

Some variations on castles in different settings. Here the first one:

Starting to look great! I would however suggest some more detail on the macro level - i.e, snow on the mountains, maybe some dense fog, or something else to give the scene more depth.

Also, looking to the right hand side, the hill with the tree is completely black, while just a few feet over, the castle is illuminated. I understand this is a stylistic approach, but incongruities like this hurt the brain :stuck_out_tongue:

Hi Havoc,
thanks for you’re feedback, but I can not agree with it :slight_smile: Hear my explanation to the points mentioned by you:

  1. “more detail on the macro level.”
    The whole point of this artistic approach is to tell a story visually with very few, but focused and subtle means. For example…
  • in the first two pictures it’s the guard watching the valley. The second one is more clearer on that story, whereas the first one gives more overview of the castle. So nothing else to distract the viewer from that center message, think of Rembrandt’s portraits with their backgrounds (nearly) black.

  • the third pic is to show the castle in moonlight. thats a bit overexaggerated bright I admit that, but does exactly the job/story. the sky and mountains act just as background and should not distract the viewer with details. This picture just tells you how the castle looks in moonlight, not more. the last pic/version does something completely different:

  • in the last picture i have some details, but these belong to the story i like to tell with this variation and are not unnecessary background details: there is a horse to the left without a rider. in the distance you can see a tower like from a maigcian. There is one room in the castle-ruins light up, who might be there? the dead trees near the castle are in contrast to the living tree on the right or at the viewer’s standpoint.
    So this last picture invites you to think about it:
    You as viewer are in the foreground below a tree (branches close up from above) and see the scene. Don’t you start thinking:

  • There is a light in one of the rooms of the castle, so the ruins appear not to be abandoned completely. who might be there? may it be a threat or rather a opportunity? …
  • The horse to the left has not rider…is it wild or tamed? Might it’s rider be nearby?..
  • Why are the trees dead near the castle but not furhter away, what happened to the trees and the castle to decay?
  • There is a tower in the middle distance, that looks from it shape like by a magician. Might a mage have somthing to do with what happened at the castle? The tower could be my next stop for my trip down the valley to the lakes after I investigated the castle ruins…
  1. “more fog, or something else to give the scene more depth”

Well there is already a lot of fog that fades the colour contrast from the foreground to the distant horizon. you can hardly have more depth visualised without loosing the mountains in the far distance, e.g. by blurring or fading-out, wich is what i dont want, as they ought to be visible and part of the scene.

  1. black tarrain in foreground.

yes, you are right there, and one can interpret this as artistic approach to something like a paper-cut style in the foreground. But then also castle would have to be black which would mean it would loose all of its details/geomety below the line of the hills in the foreground. thereby about 2/3 of the lower castle would be black an disappear. I did not want this, but on the other hand the lightning in unreal lit up the static mesh of the castle differently than the landscape, so it also was a technical issue that lead me to this result.

a light sketch: