This is one of the projects I worked on for Faycrest Studios. This architecture is part of the “Noble City” and is the same city as the one that Solita’s Castle is in. My contract with the team ended before we settled on a final design, but I enjoyed the process a ton and feel good with the progress that was being made.
My goal while I was designing the architecture for this region of the game was to combine Greek and German architecture together to create something new. That turned out to be a difficult challenge, since most of the German architecture we were referencing were owned by common folk and most of the Greek were temples and other religious sites. I decided to lean harder into one style than the other for the different aspects of the city, German for the town and Greek for the castle. The city is the most wealthy of all the regions in the game, so I tried to push that idea and convey a sense of regality and abundance in the design.
This sheet is when we began to feel the identity of the city was appearing. We liked a lot of the bottom designs, particularly H, P, Q, and R.
My team wanted to create a modular kit to assemble these buildings with, so I made a 3D blockout and paintover to show them ways that could be done with minimal pieces.
After some time, we were having some issues with the architecture style because there are a lot of flat, multi-level areas in the level blockout that the player can walk on top of and it was difficult to implement the tiered buildings with slanted roofs. After doing some more research, I remembered Santorini Greece, a place that fit our original architectural goals but also worked with the level blockout much more naturally!
I made a few more sketches of the architecture design and David Kennedy, the intern I was overseeing, made a 3D blockout of buildings based off this new idea.
I painted over the blockout that David gave me and heavily adjusted a lot of things. This new style clicked immediately with us and we could tell this was the final design we stumbled upon. My contract time ended before we were able to dive into the details of the setdressing, but I’m proud of what we were able to accomplish.