Populating the Village if you know what I mean

When deciding upon the kinds of assets I would have to populate the village, I researched into the kinds of basic materials that they would have access to and what would various objects that could be manipulated into. As the village is mostly comprised of wood, this would indicate that the villagers have an abundance of wood to create their everyday tools and objects.

For the boat I wanted to keep it fairly simple. As the village is still developing in their world, they are still inexperienced in the ways of creating a more sophisticated boat as well as other materials in limited quantity.

I had spread many of the boats around the level to show that they are still constructing as well as spreading them towards the background closer to the horizon in the distance. I placed them there to show that the village is going out and exploring.

With the watch towers out in the distance shows that the borders of the village are beyond that of what you can physically stand on. I added many watch towers in various parts of the level

as well to let the player have a look at the surroundings from a higher vantage point.

I continued to add everyday objects in the towers such as bookshelves with beverages and tea etc. to make it look more like a place to relax more than an aggressive guard post; so that the village can have more awareness around their surroundings.

The cliff in the back has gone through various changes with ideas during the block out stage. It began as a split down the middle with a gate overhead leading into the main land.

However as I continued to explore what I could do with the cliff, I preferred the idea of having multiple entrances leading into the mainland around the sides.

As the main focus is on the water village, I didn’t want to draw too much attention away from it by showing what could be inside the mainland.

Though I wanted to have a comfortable feel with the village with its visuals and colours, I also wanted to leave a little mystery behind certain aspects if one was to think a little further into it. Choosing to make the entrances around the sides of the village adds to that mystery of what is on the island; showing that there could be a reason why they are staying out of sight of the island.

With the buildings and hut themselves, I populated the level with small homes that comprised only of a small single room. Because the village is a small developing area, I wanted to show the player that this is a village where the villagers prefer the outdoor life than a closed room.

Base of the Small House

I wanted to personalise each house to look different from within and designed the interiors of the houses to contrast with the exterior and the outdoors. With hot colours of the sun on the outside, I added the cool colours to reflect the water from below the houses. I littered the entire level with various leaves on the water to contrast with the colours as well to break up the colours of the surface.

Many of the houses are single rooms; however there are few that seem to have around 2 rooms. Although this doesn’t seem like much, it more than enough shows that perhaps the owner of this house is more privileged and a more prominent figure of the community.

Base of the Double House

 

I designed the stage with three other particular buildings that would differ from being homes of the village. There is firstly a dining area which includes a dining building, the second being a tool building which also connects the walkable mountain to the lower levels, and lastly a small churchlike area further away from the rest of the buildings.

As I didn’t want any part of the village to feel too remote and far from everyone else, I added an area outside of the church area where a bunch of people could come out and enjoy the view looking out into the sea and the distant mountains. Not too remote, but a nice difference if people wanted to have a quieter place to relax.

Some of my assets used to populate the Village

I also populated certain areas with planks and barrels, etc. floating or sunk to the bottom of the water. I didn’t spread these around every part of the level as I thought that it would overkill the level and would not look as nice if there was too many around. Another reason is that in many places it wouldn’t make as much sense why they are there as I have placed these objects in areas that are in construction or where there are other similar assets near them in which they could have fallen off from dry land.

Close up on the table