Bakemura (Youkai’s Village/Japan Monster City)

This is one of the environment designs that I've done for my collaboration project Bakuton. I enjoyed creating this piece because it was a new breakthrough for me as our project involved both Japan and Western art style. I was deeply inspired by one of my childhood movie called A Chinese Ghost Story: The Tsui Hark Animation and I wanted to create the environment similar to that. Therefore I used red lights as the main lighting source and put up some neon light to bring out the crowded, tipsy, flirtatious nightlife atmosphere. Without overtaking by the lighting, I enhanced the shape language and the silhouette of the village and I also make the proportion of the village slightly unlogical as I don't think human size of measurements are suitable for Youkai's village. To make the design more storytelling, I tried to put up some Youkai weird behaviour on it, such as making the river as a Ramen soup by adding some flower, leaf and naruto on the river, a Japanese bridge, a sashimi on a sushi shop and a wine house with a wine shape.