This environment started as an early exploration into stylized dungeon spaces, focusing on composition, lighting, and the feeling of a mysterious underground chamber. After completing the initial block out and first lighting pass, the project was set aside as other work and projects took priority.

Revisiting the scene years later has been a rewarding exercise in growth and iteration. With fresh perspective and new skills, I’m continuing to refine the environment—enhancing the materials, lighting, and storytelling elements that bring the space to life.

Projects like this are a reminder that creative work isn’t always linear. Sometimes stepping away and returning later allows you to see the piece with clearer eyes and push it further than you originally imagined.

I have a list of things I'd like to tackle just to get the first pass done before iteration and prop-pulation.  Hope to have more regular updates as I wrap this up.

Well figured it was time to share a little update on my dungeon.  Lots of rough-ins still with nothing being close to final, as I'm just trying to get a first pass on most of my sculpting done on trims, props and one offs.  Getting there slowly with the short amount of time I tend to have after work, but trying to make the most of it and work smarter....not harder :)!  Hoping to tackle the stairs and door arches next, possibly following up with the doors and bridges.  Would leave most of the metal work and freestanding arch supports to do after that in all their variants.  This has been fun to do and I'm really looking forward to lighting once I get all the elements in.  Lighting is probably my favorite thing to do in the pipeline outside of sculpting/texturing.

I've been slowly working on piecing together this new dungeon level based off some elements I've kit bashed from some various concepts. (Seen Below)

I'm aiming for a Darksiders Genesis feel and have been recently playing through and digesting all the amazing work that's been done for that game.  Really looking forward to posting updates and getting this next project done.

Here's a quick link I posted to IG of my 1st pass grayblock in Unreal. I wanted to make sure it felt ok while clicking around and traversing.  I found some issues I took note to correct, but it was fun to actually move around in it using the template Unreal provides for a top down game.

Walk thru of Rough Greyblock

Concept Inspiration:

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/Qy9lL 

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/EZN92 

Past few weeks I've been fleshing out this model as a personal project based off the talents of Bill Cooper.  A few years ago he loaned me one of his beautiful concepts, I started out with just the base concept and decided to flesh it out further and make a little mini scene based on my own interpretation of scene.

I'm at the point where I'll be texturing it and then doing some further geo tweaks, but I thought this would be a great time to show some progress.

My final goal for this is to hand paint all the textures, similar to some of my other pieces and then use it as a model I can re-skin to do some stylized PBR trials, swapping out the materials.