I'm currently doing concept work for a senior film, and these pieces are my share as far as environments go. Now the modeler has to take what I've done and translate that into a 3D model. The student, Cameron Butler, is doing a film about a crocodile named Miles trying to make friends with his human neighbor, a little girl named Pearl. Him being a crocodile, of course, presents some problems in this cute short. My task was to design Miles's swamp home. So first we have some grayscale comps I showed her to start, see which direction she preferred. 

The second one was the one she felt was best, and also easiest to model. She communicated that Miles's home was not full swamp, but rather a swampy pond surrounded by grass. So I made that change and started adding colors. This is not supposed to really be foreboding or scary, Miles is civilzed after all. And the look of this film is quite cute and child-friendly, so I kept th colors light, but still made it look like a crocodile would find this place quite comfortable. 

And finally, the finished piece! Cameron was happy with th results. I added the little girl's house and fence to give it a sense of place and placement, and bumped up the warm lighting. I had fun with this piece!

Next I was asked to do some tree concepts. First I sketched a bunch in my sketchbook. Looking at real tree shapes as well as some stylized variations done by others, and tried to find a simplistic middleground that wouldn't be hell to model out. I also wanted it to fit with the color palette and look of this film, so I avoided too much sharpness. I also threw in some wild cards, just in case I missed the mark (numbers 17 and 18 mostly) 

Out of those, she chose 14, most of them with the same feel and basic structure, to keep the look consistent but also visually interesting and realistic. A good variety I'd say! So I cleaned them up, made sure they were reasonably simple and easy to model, and viola! Here we have the final trees. 

Visual development is my favorite form of illustration. I love how ideas just form from other ideas, and there's this groove that happens when you're just world-building and taking story and translating it into something concretely visual. I'll be doing prop sheets from this point on for this particular film.