Spirit Town Center

This scene shows the center of a spirit town, specifically the town that Tian and her "grandmother" live in. The buildings and lights are inspired by the night market from Studio Ghibli's Spirited Away.

As a tribute to my Chinese heritage, I designed and decorated the buildings in a very Asian style. The building in the middle has the characters "fish" (left) and "meat" (right), and the sign directly above the entrance says "eat." The far building contains the Chinese characters for "rice," "noodles," and "vegetables."

Much like the night market in Spirited Away, the spirits only come out after the sun goes down. As night falls, the market slowly comes to light. To convey this, I experimented with a twilight lighting set-up.

All assets were modeled in Maya, and textures were drawn in Photoshop.

As shown in greater detail below, the character on the lamp says "oil." The closest building, which has fish-themed decorations, contains a sushi conveyor belt, and the farthest building serves noodles and other assorted street food. Because I wanted the spirit food to look different from human food, the pieces are textured to have an "artificial" appearance: the noodles are very glassy, and the sushi looks like gummy candy. The goal was to create food that was recognizable but not entirely realistic.

I would like to develop this town further in the future. I'm currently working on modeling a building closer to the town's outskirts.