The first project of my 3rd year of University, PHOT301. I decided to carry on creating models, but more in the style of Red Dead Redemption 2. Red Dead Redemption 2 is a game set in the American Midwest during 1899.
The cinematic landscapes are truly something to behold, most of the landscapes created for the game were inspired by Albert Bierdstadt's paintings of Yosemite that were created during the early 1880's.
Here is Albert Bierdstadt's painting of Yosemite Falls compared to Donner Falls on the game Red Dead Redemption 2. Although they aren't 100% the same, there are some similarities and you can see where they got their inspiration from.
Mount Corcoran by Albert Bierdstadt and Elysian Pool on the game Red Dead Redemption 2. You can see that these 2 locations share more similarities than the previous 2, from the waterfall and lake, to the land/trees on the right hand side.
For my model, I focused more on the buildings. The rustic style of the houses were so simplistic, yet sturdy. To start the project off, I decided to make a simply stone house with a wooden roof.
I used foam board for the base and layered plaster, styrofoam and putty over the top to create the small hills and uneven ground. After it dried, i painted the ground brown to resemble dirt, so any patches the grass didn't cover you couldn't see the white of the plaster.
I then used small stones to build the house, which was a challenge as one evening all of the walls fell down and it had to be redone. But I was able to make the walls stronger by using small sticks to hold them up on the interior of the house.
Finally, I used sticks to create trees, as the images were going to be quite close up, I didn't need to create the tops of the trees, only the trunks.
To add more depth to the image, I added some fake trees behind the small hills and painted onto some cardboard to create mountains in the distant background.
Like my other models, I used two 36 LED lights and used an orange filter on one, and a white on the other. This was to simulate a sun rising. While taking the images, I moved the light for each one, this way I could find the best position for the light and find the shadows I wanted to. But, while taking the images, I created a sequence or time lapse of the sun rising and setting.