Project - Environmental Design

Throughout my weeks at university I have also been working on our end of semester project. So far I've been having a lot of fun with it, and now that I'm finished with classwork I'm going to share my progress here.This project has offered a lot of flexibility as we were able to come up with our own worlds to base our concepts in.

When world building I drew inspiration from various media around me when creating the idea. I love the aesthetic of futuristic eco cities and biospheres, but I wanted to combine them with a more dystopian feel. I was also reading the original Jurassic Park novel at the time, and I enjoyed the more scientific focus the book had compared to the movie - even if the 'science' was all just fiction and guesswork.


I decided to concept an eco city, based in the future after an economic and environmental collapse, where people rely on biospheres to live in and grow crops. Biospheres are utilized for crops, and there are also giant bio-engineered pollinators used for pollinating. This was the starting point for figuring out what three things I would be concepting. I like to use pinterest to keep track of ideas and inspiration, and below is the starting point for my environmental design

I then looked at smaller scale builds, especially interiors, to start thinking more about the functionality of the environment. I also came across some photos of mushrooms that inspired me. I liked the contrast of the organic growth around the geometric containers. I find looking at things like use and structure helps me when thinking about how the biospheres in the city may actually be used.




I began with some initial sketches below, taking the parts I liked most from my references and trying them out in certain ways. I played about with both exteriors and interiors, as at this stage I wasn't yet sure what was more useful to portray.

I tried out some quick environmental thumbnails, focusing on the outdoor environment. I then chose one of these to refine a little, to get a feel of where it was going. This is ultimately where I decided to instead go for concepting an indoor environment. I wanted to explore more the functionality of the environment and its place within the world, but this early development still helped me get the ideas needed for this down on paper (or screen!).

I wasn't too happy with my thumbnails, and decided to take a different approach to my environment. I thought an interior piece would be better for me, as I would be able to explore the functionality of the environment more. I started by listing and concepting lots of features that would make the environment unique, and detailed some of them which can be seen below. I liked the idea of a hospital/surgery/vet area for treating the pollinators.

Some ideas for 'insect pods', where some of the pollinators would rest when in the environment.

Some of the table ideas that I explored further. I liked the table around the tree as a centerpiece for the room, as I felt it could tie it all together, but I also like the more traditional 'surgery table'.

I quickly put down a lot of the things I would like included in the room above, and started mixing and matching them together below to get a feel for how I would like the room to be.

I then explored some of the key features of the room a but further, as I wanted them to look unique. I added honey to the pods to hint at their use and looked more at the shape design for the table.

I brought these together in my final line drawing, using an earlier thumbnail to help me with layout. This was the final design that I was least happy with, and looking back now there are a lot of areas I would changed. Although I still like the overall idea, the room looks to plain and polished for the what I was going for. I can see that I need a lot more things in there to hint at the story, concept and functions of the environment. This was the first concept piece I worked on, and I tried my best to correct this in my vehicle and character designs.