Tunnels Moodboard, Research and Initial Ideas

Above is my moodboard, at first glance looks a bit random but it covers lighting references, VFX, style variations, materials and most importantly, tunnels and cave structures. So here's what I'm thinking for each...

Tunnel Structure

The first question I asked myself was, "How did these fictional Tunnels get here?" I believe they would have existed before any human, immortal or god walked in the Everneath. The Everneath trilogy is based around the Hades and Persephone myth, so looking in my Greek Mythology book at world creation I found this. Gaia is Earth and Tartarus means the Underworld. I imagine the Everneath would have appeared the same time as these did since it is a world between Earth and Hell, I also imagine it's location would be reflected in the world's design by being a blend of the natural Earth, and preternatural underworld. The tunnels wouldn't be an exception to that, even if it is the deepest, darkest, unnatural part.

Here's a map from the second book Everbound, the tunnels I think run underneath the world's centre like the underground tube system in Central London.

Because of its nature and purpose, I think it would look like an ethereal hellscape - an unholy divinity. I looked at several different types of caves and tunnels and decided the best one to base this piece on would be a lava tunnel especially after researching how they are formed. The walls in the books are described as coal, coal also looks like lava rock and both are used for burning.

VFX

The tunnels is a place of power and energy, a place of transfer so I will use VFX - more specifically animated materials in unreal engine to achieve this. My initial thought was to imitate electricity using a colour to reflect human souls, at first I thought blue, white or green, maybe even a mix in a chromatic aberration kind of way. Then I came across a tutorial on creating a cosmic material with a limited colour palette in different variations. I felt brought me closer to what I wanted even though I didn't know exactly what that was yet. The material used caustics, stars and what I'm calling a main vein. When someone dies some say a new star appears in the sky, including this subtly felt right. Now I was getting somewhere, however energy surges - I needed to add a pulse to make it come alive. With what I have, it needs more detail in the vein, it needs to look like there was something being carried inside the vein.

A iridescent colour like a bubble would be a perfect colour representation of souls, but now I'm going off track because it's not so much souls that are being drained, the Everneath isn't interested in souls - that's for Hell and Heaven. It's concerned with emotional energy, so how could I convey negative emotional energy and with which colours? I still believe iridescent is what I'm looking for because of how it changes colour when viewed at different angles so I'm going to experiment with making a dark iridescent material. On a final note, I will need to all the VFX I do look look embedded in the wall, not projected onto it, the light is coming from inside the wall.

Lighting

Lighting is going to be a challenge because it's underground - there is no light source. The VFX is what I intend on being the main light source. I know I want some fog and some shadows to create an unnerving sense for my audience - but what would give off a shadow? Well, the Everneath have inhabitants called shades, they're a floating figureless mounds of oil. Their sole purpose is to serve and protect the Everneath, they have access to hidden places and can go through materials - Everlivings become shades when they miss a feed. The game Torchlight II gave me the idea to include this.

When is comes to warm and cool coloured lighting, I struggled to make a decision because cool reflects the eeriness and goes with a coal colour and theme of death. However, warm lighting goes with the theme of hellscape and lava. After doing some research both can be done! So this is my intention.

Style

Art direction is hard to pin point exactly right now but I know it's NOT going to be super realistic or super stylised either. I'm thinking somewhere between realistic and over-exaggerated stylised as defined by this article: Realistic vs. Stylized: Technique Overview (80.lv)

Another great article I found was: Building Underground Environments With UE4 (80.lv)