Sea Dragon Palace, Kaidan

[Gamerprinter]

No map yet, just a placeholder, for now.

For a while, I've been wanting to develop the Sea Dragon Palace of Kaidan, as a place for the Sea Dragon god of the seas to inhabit, protected by Ryujin (sea animal shape-changers, dragon folk), same-bito (shark men), squadrons of sea turtles off the northwestern coast of Ryuki Island, on my Map of Kaidan (Ryuki is south of Yonshu Island, in the center lower left of map)...

Islands of Kaidan

In Japanese mythology, the Ryu (Sea Dragon god) dwells in a palace beneath the sea (location unknown), however sharks and sea turtles have significance in the legend.

Secondly, there's the existence of the Yonagumi Monument, a controversial set of rock formations 15' - 100' below sea level off the Coast of Yonagumi island, in the Ryukyu chain, south of Japan, that some claim to be "built by human hands", while others contend these are natural rock formations.

I'm going to borrow described structures of Yonagumi Monument and create a Sea Dragon Palace city, residence of the Sea Dragon god, royal family, royal guards, temple structure, near a reef, I see a possible submarine city location for Ryujin, same-bito, ningyo (Kaidanese merfolk) of several thousand.

I'm thinking some kind of cross between Japanese Castle town architecture and city plan, crossed with Yonagumi megalithic structures and use the reef/sea floor terrain to help define it.

Sounds to me like an interesting project, I will probably continue my hand-drawn digitally enhanced style to portray the Sea Dragon Palace & City.

Thoughts?

GP

[Steel General]

Sounds pretty cool, look forward to seeing what you do for it.

[Gamerprinter]

After some thought, I'm half convinced not to do this one hand drawn. Why? Two reasons. One, drawing all the detailed coral in the reef is going to be really tough, and in the end, the ink may distract from the intended beauty and semi-realism in my vision of the reef. Two, after playing with Xara, I've come up with some cool ways to create coral.

Below are several samples of coral I created using Xara.

Now the Brain Coral on the bottom right are 3D egg shaped objects I created in Izware Nendo, exported as 3DS objects, imported to Raydream. To the brain corals left is a texture I created in Xara referencing a photo of brain coral. Basically they are 8 point lines made into a web of odd shapes covering the square area for the texture. Then I grabbed all the lines, converted them from lines to shapes, then combined all shapes into a single object. Then I used a color picker and selected the ridges of the brain coral photo and applied them to the line-shapes. Then I applied a flat bevel, followed by a feathered drop shadow. Then I created a square to place beneath, used the color picker on the recessed areas of the brain coral photo and applied to it. Moved it behind, then exported as a JPG. Within my 3D app, I applied a spherical texture map, and used the JPG as the texture.

The purple stalk-like blobs are simply irregular round like shapes given the purple color, with a rounded bevel applied. A smaller irregular round shape is created then stacked with the previous. With 4 or 5 such stacked shapes, I selected all, grouped together then applied a drop shadow. Xara allows me to duplicate my grouped shape, rotate it and the shadows and bevel shadow remain on the same side, while the object faces elsewhere. Thus using the same stalk object, different highlights, rotations and sizes make them seem less like I copied it, although there's only 3 stalks created in the colony of them, with multiple duplicates of a couple of them.

The coolest discovery was that lichen like coral. I even created a mini-tutorial showing you what I did. Basically I created a squiggly 8 point line. Then using line shapes, I applied the pinched ends on the line. Then I converted line to shape, applied a tan-nish color, selected the chiseled bevel tool and applied the bevel. Then I cloned the shape, extended the bevel further outward and moved the cloned shape beneath the first. To each beveled shaped I applied its own drop shadow to simulate 3D. On the top left, I've created a group of six or so such lines, with all the steps above applied, then grouped and copied about six times, stacked, rotated giving the final result.

This experiment turned out so well, I think I'm going to do everything in Xara with 3D elements combined to create this undersea map, instead of going hand-drawn.

Thoughts?

GP

[Jykke]

Looks pretty ok to me

[Gamerprinter]

Here's a sample sea floor, using the coral objects I've created, plus some older 3D plants, with a sandy floor texture.

My plans are to create coral thickets, areas covered in sea grass, and seaweed groves, amid megalithic formations and the appropriate palace/fortress construction. In the deeper regions I will place a transparent blue layer to simulate the depths, which will get progressively darker, the lower the elevation, until everything is just a solid blue.

Coral needs more color though, more reds and oranges, some yellows, more coming soon!

The final map will be lots bigger of course and all this coral and seaweed much smaller, but the "city structures" must dominate.

Sea floor sample...

GP

[Steel General]

Some nice looking stuff there GP.

[Ascension]

Yeah, that's pretty funky and gives me some ideas. Neat stuff.

[Gamerprinter]

More undersea stuff.

The Building Roof, and the already mentioned brain coral balls, as well as the reddish tree like coral and the weird objects in the top left are all 3D objects I modeled in Nendo, then textured and rendered in Raydream. Oh the rocks, the kelp in the lower center and the swirl of grass at the bottom are 3D objects too (ones I created a long time ago.)

The new anemone-like coral objects in the top center (red, blue, yellow and green patch) were created on an old program I had that I hadn't used much... Zbrush 1.13 - it was a really early version, but still could do cool stuff. Even that green scaly like thing.

Then everything else was created in PD Particles, a program I dabble with sometimes. Except for a few things like tree leaves, pine/spruce needle tree/bushes and sea plants, I don't think its realistic enough for my style. However, undersea animals like anemone, corals, sea slugs, worms, crinoidish creatures, PD Particles can make some alien looking stuff and seem very appropriate in this case.

I started the ground layout a couple times and scratched them all, they weren't "flowing" for me. I finally started to make one then Xara crashed. So I have to start again, but I'm starting to get some ideas. To save me from future hassles, that first lichen-like coral I converted to a transparent PNG file, rather than a set of stacked bevels that was causing the crash problem. Problem resolved I think.

Anyway next update.

GP

[msa]

Those are some nice design elements for the map. I can't wait to see how they play out in execution. My one thought, with no idea what you are going to do, is that the vivid colors contrast in my mind with an underwater scene. Although its certainly accurate once you take the water out of the equation, the map might be more evocative to a surface-dweller if you washed over everything with a murky blue and dulled down some of the colors.

[Gamerprinter]

@MSA - when I do underwater map design, especially in this more realistic style, between layers of higher and lower elevation ground, I place full page sheets of transparent blue with 50 - 80% transparency. As they stack the "color" objects located towards the bottom begin to gain bluish monochrome effect, expecially under several layers of transparent blue layers. They start to become more difficult to see, but that adds to the feeling of depth. Thus the objects located at higher elevations maintain their color more distinctly.

Its part of the plan, so I try to emulate the vibrancy of the colors as would be seen above water, then work the map to emulate depth, and so the bright colors work in my favor, and can be more easily seen way at the bottom.