The Hermit’s Isle unveiled

After days drifting aimlessly through the apparently endless mists of the Unseeing Archipelago, you spot something in the distance. A dark shape is slowly breaking through the thick fog. Curious, you squint your eyes and try to make out the shape, but it is impossible to peer through that boundless expanse of grey.
Unbidden, you feel yourself lurch against the railing as a current snatches your boat off its course, forcing it to accelerate towards the strange shape. As you draw closer and closer, it starts to take form. A great, pale, hollow eye is staring at you from afar. You take a deep breath, and meet its gaze.

-

This concept was made as part of my Portfolio course at the Game Assembly. The scene takes place around an islet on the planet of Khar-Shalkhi, a water planet in an RPG space-opera style game. The islet is inhabited by a hermit NPC, where he has built a base of the debris that has been caught by the same stream that drew the player in. For this project, I started out focusing on exploration and worldbuilding before moving on to sketching thumbnails and creating a blockout in Blender. I used Quixel Bridge and my own assets to build the basis of the scene before refining and finalizing it in Photoshop.