The Mountain City - An Initial Concept

 Initial Idea

Since the last post on my near eastern project, I  have decided to move away from the Oasis City and onto the other major city in my game world, founded by the other of the two brothers. I knew that in contrast to the former, I wanted this second city to be closed off from the world outside as though its king had cocooned himself and his people away, in line with his inward-looking ideology. I therefore wanted to make it look and feel drastically different (within the bounds of this setting) from the oasis city, which is open and welcoming to all. 

The first thing I decided was that it would be set within a different environment - whereas the oasis is located in the vast, empty sand dunes, this second city would be located in a mountainous, rocky region, which would lend itself to the city's secluded nature. For simplicity, I refer to it as the Mountain City for now. I searched online for other fantasy mountain city concepts, to see what sorts of things of have been done:

Fantasy mountain city concepts (above), plus setting reference (bottom)

First Inspiration 

With my general direction set, the first thing I needed was a real-world context to draw reference from - Petra in Jordan immediately came to mind: 

Al-Khazneh (The Treasury) in Petra

Petra is an ancient city located in a mountainous region of southern Jordan. It famously features remarkable architectural remains that were carved into cliff faces, such as those seen above. I've not been to Petra myself (though I hope to one day), but my parents have and they noted how difficult the approach through the mountainous terrain is and how secluded the ruins are as a result - this turned out to be the perfect contextual inspiration for my concept. Inspired by Petra's cliff face architecture, I decided that I wanted the city itself to be a very vertical space that is built into some sort of rock formation, again in direct contrast to the Oasis City, which sprawls across a wide, flat desert. 

Sketching

First Sketches showing ideation of the mountain city, inspired by Petra's cliff-carved architecture 

The spread above shows my first few ideas for the city's overall form. I was very drawn to the idea of taking Petra's rock face carvings and extrapolating them to a scale that is only possible in the context of supernatural power, with an entire city carved into the side of a giant mountain. As shown by some of the sketches, I also considered having the mountain be completely hollowed out like a shell, the majority of the city on its inside, with just a few outward looking carvings/'windows'. As you can see, having the city surrounded by some sort of chasm (most likely created by its founder) was also an idea that I had early on, as this would make it completely unreachable to outsiders, as is the intention. 

Early concept for the Mountain City's form

The colour piece above makes some of my ideas from the sketching a little clearer, I think. The city is surrounded by a mountain range which conceals it from eyes beyond its limits. As in some of my first sketches, there is also a massive chasm surrounding the city on all sides. For this concept, I decided to combine Petra's rock face carvings with the tiered architectural forms of a ziggurat, only far more vertical than what we see in the real world. The overall idea here is that the city itself is one giant ziggurat-like structure that has been drawn from the faces of a mountain using the founder's power. I tried to show this fusion of rock formation and architecture by leaving some of the natural forms as elements of the city's overall figure, such as the large cliff face on the left.

Next Steps

I really liked this concept as I think the combination of natural and architectural forms provided an interesting silhouette. However, I had so many other muddled ideas swimming around in my brain for what a 'great mountain city' could be in my world, and this idea wasn't quite convincing enough for me to let go of the rest of them just yet. I spoke to Josh about this and so he tasked me with coming up with five completely different mountain city concepts, so that we could explore different avenues before picking one, comfortable in the knowledge that I had at least tested my ideas. He also said that he might choose the one to continue on for me, to simulate the experience of having an art director make decisions on the work I present them with, rather than being able to go with what I personally prefer.

In my next post I'll be exploring these five concepts, and discussing the direction that has been selected for me to move forward with.