The Gnomon Workshop – Environmental Storytelling

In this title, Art Director Eddie Bennun shares his workflow for designing a credible game environment that portrays a clear story. Using Google SketchUp and Adobe Photoshop, Eddie explores the importance of shape language and its crucial role in creating a narrative composition. As the image evolves from big shapes and silhouettes to small storytelling details, a variety of tools, techniques and strategies are explained to assist the student’s understanding of Eddie’s professional process. Topics include how to keep consistency between foreground and background, creating a sense of depth and distance, choosing proper camera angles, photo textures and credibility, and attracting the viewer’s curiosity. For those developing their environment design skills, this title provides a valuable lesson on how to take the efficiency of 3D layout into presentation ready illustration using 2D paintover techniques.