Concept Art Tutorial 08: Creating a Birdseye Illustration

There are a lot of people who see my work and ask me... "How long does it take to do a Birdseye Illustration like that?" Well...the design process can take months or even years on certain theme parks! In this article, I will briefly discuss the design process behind a Birdseye Illustration, and why the answer is a lot more complicated than you think.

1) Project Brief: While working at BRPH (https://www.brph.com), the Creative Team was assigned to build a virtual reality theme park using Unreal Engine 4 software using the latest high-end AMD graphics cards. Our team of 4 people consisted of...

(Me) Chris Chien (www.chris-chien.com),

Eric Cabico (https://www.ericsworldcreative.com)

Miranda Kittendorf (https://kittendorfart.com)

Jessyka Colón Pentón (https://www.jessykacolonpenton.com).

We only had about 3 months to design, model and construct a fully working virtual reality program that would be demoed for the SIGGRAPH 2018 Vancouver show, which would have an attendance of 16,000 people.

2) The Story: Even though we had very concrete constraints in terms of deadline and deliverables, creativity - we were given limitless opportunity to explore. Everyone on the team had different ideas for what we wanted our theme park to be about, and how we were to divide up the work. Since we had four people on the team, I proposed that we could divide up the theme park into 4 sections... kind of like how there are 4 houses in Harry Potter. Each team member would have their own creative freedom, but contribute to an overall narrative.

The company were working for - BRPH (https://www.brph.com) is a 50 year old architecture and engineering company that has its roots doing projects for NASA! BRPH has engineered and designed amazing things such as space shuttle launch pads, manufacturing facilities for Boeing 747s, schools, government projects, theme parks and much more! I thought it would be interesting for this virtual reality theme park to pay homage to amazing legacy of the company.

There would be 4 sections of the park: 1) Manufacturing 2) Aerospace 3) Entertainment and 4) Education. For the park layout, we decided to make the park map a square as well in reference to the company's logo - which is a blue square! And since this was a virtual reality theme park, we would make the player spawn from center of the park - which would give the player equal opportunity to explore each of the 4 lands!

3) Design Sketches: The land I picked to do was "Aerospace Land!" I was largely inspired by Blizzard's "Overwatch" video game - which had a design aesthetic that was both Sci-Fi and a bit fun and cartoony. Since this was a very accelerated design process, these were meant to just be very functional drawings were both for ideation and as reference sheets for when I started modeling. On the bottom, you can see how I created a plan view of the park layout in AutoCAD, and quickly did a isometric drawing on top with marker.

4) 3D Modeling: This was where the bulk of the work happened - and the most time-consuming process. I brought the design sketches into Google Sketchup and started modeling out the buildings. I used a software called "Enscape" to render the buildings in real time. I could see how my 3D models looked with full lighting and materials while I adjusted the camera angle or switched out different textures. The feedback was almost instantaneous! I was quite amazed by how far 3D modeling has come.

Here are some more in-program screenshots of the model, showing how easy it was to explore "emissive lights" (Glowing lights), change time of day, and quickly establish a mood.

5) Illustration: After all that time, we can finally go to the Birdseye Illustration. I want to point out that the model screenshot created below was the work of 4 people! It was really a team effort. Although we have invested a lot of time into the design, story and modeling process, all that work really help establishes the believability and immersive nature of the environment.

The above image is a render of the overall environment. The bottom is after I used Photoshop to composite the sky, surrounding environment and the trees.

Next I added a darken layer over everything and proceeded to add lights on a "color dodge" layer. This allowed me to control the color of the lights, and add a lot of drama and vibrancy to the image!

Yup! And that's the finished image. The fireworks, smokes and light beams really added a nice finishing touch.

The point of this article is that the illustration process only took about 1 week or so. But the design portion of the theme park took about 3 months with a team of 4 people. I do want to acknowledge that the real reason why the design portion took so long was because we created a fully functioning Virtual Reality Theme Park program. In general, the design phase will often be more time-consuming than just the illustration phase alone!

Below is a 3D Modeling Demo Reel that shows a brief fly through of the Aerospace Land (Rocket Town) that I created for these Virtual Theme Park.

Below are some links of some of my team members and the company website. It was such a wonderful opportunity to work at such a great company with such amazing people.

BRPH Architecture and Engineering: https://www.brph.com

Eric Cabico: https://www.ericsworldcreative.com

Miranda Kittendorf: https://kittendorfart.com

Jessyka Colón Pentón: https://www.jessykacolonpenton.com

Thank you so much for checking out my concept art tutorial. I hope you were able to learn something from this, or maybe you were just entertained or intrigued by the process. If you would like to stay in touch and learn more about my process, you can follow me on social media at the following links.

?? Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/themeparkarts/

?? Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/themeparkarts/

?? Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDiY3SEy3qU

?? Art Portfolio: www.chris-chien.com

?? Email: [email protected]

Past Concept Art Tutorials

Concept Art Tutorial 01: Pokemon Go Theme Park

Concept Art Tutorial 02: Pokemon Go 4D Show

Concept Art Tutorial 03: Doctor Strange Inspired VR Game

Concept Art Tutorial 04: Ogre Village

Concept Art Tutorial 05: Character Design with Storytelling

Concept Art Tutorial 06: Frozen Dark Ride

Concept Art Tutorial 07: Sector 7 Theme Park POV Design and Illustration