Sci fi and Fantasy Landscapes: Initial Renders

For my Sci Fi/ Fantasy Landcapes I started out working in Vue.  I went into this with a few loose ideas around different types of scenes I could create.

Some ideas I had were:

• Based in a forest scene -Treehouses, a tree house city? magical forest, springs and waterfalls
• A different planet- Ice or Crystal planet, Desert- like?
• Space ships- high tech 
• Windmills, blimps, surreal objects in an everyday setting.

When I actually started working in Vue I mostly just experimented with different ideas and types of environments, but had these initial ideas in the back of my mind.  These are some of my renders, and how I have thought to develop them.

Figure 1: Mountains or buildings?

Figure 2: Or maybe Islands?

Figures one and two show an experiment in using mountains and sculpting them to look inorganic.  If I was to continue any further with this idea I would use the more stylised lighting of Figure 2, and work on over painting areas of detail in Photoshop.

Figure 3: A surreal backdrop?

I really like this render, and I think it would be really well suited to be developed into a surreal or fantasy scene.  The fresh colours make me imagine brightly coloured blimps, or elephant shaped hot air balloons in the sky.  Perhaps a wooden windmill or bridge would work well in this scene.

I think for this scene I would draw inspiration from a brilliant artist, Naoto Hattori- who has some amazing surrealist painting; and possibly have a look at the art of some of the Studio Ghibli films.  

Figure 4: Sandy Structures

Figure 5: Cold planet

I created the interesting mountain in the background of Figure 4 and wondered how it would look in a different climate.  There are things I like about both these renders, but don't know how I would take them any further.  I like the simplicity of these scenes- to me they have a sense of isolation. Maybe I am happy enough with them as is.   

Figure 6: Floating Islands

Figure 7: Bubble

In the last two renders I wanted to experiment with a different take on the floating island- not the fantastical Avatar style floating islands, but something cold and mechanical.