Testuda Concept Art

The Var City Bridge

This was the first of four environment artworks I made for a D&D campaign with two of my close friends that took place on essentially a scaled-up, fantastical version of UMD’s campus. Single buildings were transformed into cities and districts, river became oceans, and the campus was one gargantuan continent. This bridge was once a major highway connecting the continent of Testuda (the campus) to the outside world, and a city developed on the other end called Var (a reference to the off-campus apartment Varsity). However, through an act of terrorism, bombs had been planted and set off, destroying the connection and isolating Testuda from its most valuable partner.

Who could have done this, and why? It was this question which sparked the quest for our campaign.

The artwork itself, along with the other three, were nearly entirely created in Blender, aside from a few color grading tweaks and film grain for that cinematic look. The turbulent water centerpiece, despite looking difficult to create, was created with not much more than a simple Blender modifier aptly named the “Ocean” modifier. The material for it? The built-in glass shader. Even the foam was a simple button in the modifier, linked to a blend between the glass shader and an opaque white. Nothing too fancy. In fact, the trees were simply transparent PNGs taken from google and aligned to always face the camera. Blender really took care of the hard work for me in this shot. I wanted to visualize the breach of the connection with some sort of ethereal rope that had snapped, as it also served as a magical tether across an infinite ocean. They ended up looking kind of like an Aurora Borealis, which has a neat look to it, I think.

I actually began work on this piece weeks prior to our first session, after shoving to the side a cleaned-off plate of food from the south campus dining hall as the DM eagerly scraped together the half-baked visions and concepts that eventually made up the world across the table from me, and the other player sketched out our characters. We decided then, amidst the clattering of dishes and with the looming stress of our first university final exams ahead, that we would each design our own parts of our world and only reveal it to the others when it was time. The DM would design the story, the other player would portray our in-game characters, and I would envision the world. And so I did, without any knowledge of how it would be used, and solely based off of a few hints.

The JMP Warehouse

What better setting could there be for a campaign born and raised in ENES100 than the building it took place in itself? Suddenly, ideas began to sprout of incorporating OTV’s into the story, scaled up along with the building into monstrous automated vehicles, armed with various machinery and actuators designed for tasks much like their real counterparts. As one of the older buildings on campus, the area was destined to be a well-used and even decrepit factory of what once produced these vehicles en masse.

In this particular scene, I chose to install a metal-forming system that would have manufactured steel and iron components using molds. I researched industrial factories, and noticed the massive melting and pouring buckets used in steel mills, and decided to use them as a subject. I pictured rays of sunlight filtering through grimy window panes, metal gears, tools, and papers strewn about, and the stillness and silence that has since reclaimed a once active workplace after being abruptly abandoned.

The biggest challenge was in the detailing of the scene, which is typical for a realistic environment. I could only repeat so many elements and model and texture so many items with the limited time I had, so I instead tried to create localized detail to give the impression of quality. The rays of light would direct the eye, and so I placed the two sources of detail along that line: the buckets and the tanks. I downloaded the large containers filled with some mysterious fluid (or water, I guess) and pipe greebles from free online sources, and simulated some cloth to shroud some of it, as if it were sloppily covered. I also purposefully shrouded half the frame in darkness, leaving the silhouettes to imply girders, fences, and other structural components. After some basic texturing and pipe placements, the scene was complete.

The Town Square and Iribe

The sun has set, yet this particular town bustles with frantic movement. Local officials pack enough belongings to last them on an overnight journey to the technological center of the continent, luminescent in the distance. That is the city of Iribe, transformed from UMD’s modern computer science building into a megalithic capital of the eastern shore. Again, you will notice the inclusion of various technology levels into this campaign, which defined and divided the different regions. Funny enough, throughout the hours I spent working on this piece, I had completely forgotten that the actual populous of Testuda are Tortles, not humans. Fortunately, through the power of worldbuilding and hand-waving, we made it make enough sense to pass. Just don’t ask me why there would be horses in a Tortle land.

I had been prompted with a town that sprouted from Testuda’s end of the major bridge and was nourished with frequent trade and travelers. Immediately, my first concern was how to fill up a town with people. I decided to ignore that and instead work on the town itself. As I was looking for inspiration for the setting of the town, the other player had sent pictures from her visit to St. Augustine, Florida. Knowing that this town was near an ocean, I drew references from its buildings and environment, incorporating the stone walls, red shingles, and, notably, the palm trees. I learned Blender’s geometry node system to scatter grass and rocks across the dirt, and threw in some free 3d models of fountains, market stalls, and barrels before calling it a day. Until, of course, I had to place in the dreaded people.

After stalling as best I could, I reached for free models of travelers yet came out with only two or three. I then recalled that I had taken a 3D scan of our ENES100 TF and promptly fit him into the scene wherever I could. Fortunately, the scene being shrouded in darkness helped sell the effect—and if it didn’t, I was fine with our TF being the star of the scene.

This town was the setting of the start of our adventure. Drawing more inspiration from College Park, each of our characters (the DM created his own as well) grew up in our respective regions of Testuda. Having lived in Easton Hall, my character was Amaretto: a Tortle from the population-dense and grittier corner of the continent. The other player, residing in Pyon-Chen Hall, created Ciana: a human brought to the luxurious sector as a religious leader devoted to Testudo, the goddess of the land. Lastly, the DM, having lived in the Varsity apartments, played Yukina, a human ambassador from the city of Var.

Coastal City (Var)

A serene city can be seen from the ocean, sitting on rolling hills that rise out of the waters and mature into a mountain range in the distance, and the silhouettes of grandiose neoclassical buildings are carved out from the morning light. Unknowingly, I had been crafting the final scene of the campaign that capped a massive naval battle—and I had barely three days to complete it before meeting up with my new friends. This was certainly the most rushed piece of my set of four, and it isn’t difficult to see through the cracks up close. The blockout and composition of the landscape and the ocean took most of the time, and the big drawback of these epic wide-angle shots is the sheer detail that has to do into them. Nonetheless, I believe it captured the feeling of respite it was intended to carry.

What began as a sporadic creative urge as a way of taking our minds off of finals turned into a world we each helped bring to life in our own ways. There are not many moments that feel as special to me in recent years as moments like those did. In our last weeks of the semester, collaborating on this universe became our passion, the dining halls became our iconic workspace, and we would trade ideas after ENES100 and tease out hints from each other’s creations in the meantime. After the longest, most stressful, and emotional 3 months of my life, it was more than anything I could have asked for. Now, I just had to wait until I could show them…

Traditionally, D&D campaigns begin as the party meets in a tavern before heading out on the grand adventure. When, instead, ours began with Ciana threatening to imprison Amaretto for a misunderstanding, Yukina being mistaken for an enemy after a horrendous misfire, and the town being promptly blasted to shreds, we knew that our campaign was going to be a wild, but very special, one.