Cube World: Sketch and Silhouette

Silhouette

Silhouette and shape language can be used to express the general vibe of what I wanted from my piece. In this case, I wanted most of my shapes to be round and safe that will go along with the cute aesthetic of the concept and characters.

Silhouette for buildings/props

I have three main assets in my world in total; The house, the ship, and the castle.

All of these tend to have sharp triangle centred shapes which can give off a dangerous feeling rather than cute so I round all the sharp corners up in the hope it will make the shape feels safer.

Shell house is my favourite because it has the most references and ideas on how to work with them, while the ship and castle were added later and are less detailed.

Island planning

After planning out the props that would be on the island is the island itself. My initial concept of the island is to make them out of animals such as whales, turtles, crabs and jellyfish.

First island skecthes

Then it changed later on to two other concepts

• A jellyfish island with kelp tentacles
• Island with the underside as an old civilization//ruins

Island planing

These two ideas are then dismissed after the feedback. The tentacles can look messy and it doesn’t have an actual usage while the ruins underwater may be too hard to fit in a small space as its potential should make it very detailed. These can be distracting from the actual piece.

Prefinal sketch

After a long debate, I settled with the classic floating island and included the whale as a character with the boy instead of making it a part of the island. The main structures of the island will be the shell house, castle and sank ship as planned in the silhouette.

I am very proud of this idea despite feeling that it is a bit uncreative and I could do better, but for the moment I will work with this and do my best during the rendering process. If I could improve on my world I would like for the sketch to be cleaner with continueous lines.