Personal bubble

Here you see a couple designs I made for the house of S8i’s parents. It’s a rather big building. Hand-made by her father, an engineer and a bit of a tec-geek.

Sketchbook
Down here is a page out of my sketchbook. I used to carry that book with me all the time. Most of the sketches I made on vacation with my wife. Vacation is a wonderful way of coming up with stories. Especially adventures; you meet interesting people, see different parts of the world and sometimes you start to think in a totally new way.

On this page you see my first attempts at giving S8i a back story. That means thinking about the parents and the place she grew up in. Developing her free mentality.

I started this out by drawing the bathtub. We really want to have a bathtub in the house, so one day I started looking for a good one on internet. I found an ancient tub on an archeological website. Apparently the Inca’s used to have elaborate water systems including bathing areas.

Floor plan
After the first attempts at the house it was time to think about everything the building should contain.

It’s not to scale. Please keep in mind I’m not trying to create some kind of dreamhouse. Just a place where the protagonist grew up. So, in this picture you could see there are a lot of rooms. Not just for the parents, and S8i. But for at least four guests at a time. My idea was: give S8i a childhood where she came into contact with lots of different people. This would make her interested in stories of far away places, and give her the capability to judge people correctly.

Render
My first color render of the house.

Nothing too fancy. Just a way to get a feel for the colors. I want to make the backgrounds in a mix of 2d and 3d, a bit like some of the Ghibli movies….Yeah big fan here. I did some tests using Blender. But still have a lot to learn. The house itself is situated somewhere in the forest. I’m thinking a bit like the black forests in Germany (Hah! I feel another camping trip coming).

Blender
And as last a render I made using my own texture maps. Still looks too smooth. It’s not 2d enough. But it’s a start, and I really liked the lightdynamics. In case you’re wondering I used cycles render, not the standard Blender one.

Hope you enjoy.