EMMA HOUGHTON
Level Designer
THE LATIN QUARTERS - FROM UP ON POPPY HILL
A Playable Environment Based on The Latin Quarters From Studio Ghibli's From Up On Poppy Hill
Solo Project
As an enormous fan of the Japanese animation studio, Studio Ghibli, I decided to bring a location from one of my favourite animated films to life in 3D – From up on Poppy Hill’s Latin Quarters.
My primary focus with this project was to tell the story of From up on Poppy Hill subtly through the environment itself; much in the manner of Gone Home. I chose to recreate The Latin Quarters’ in 3D due to the building’s interesting architecture, which allowed me to practice my ability to create modular assets. Visually, I took inspiration from games such as Firewatch and Life is Strange, along with the work of Studio Ghibli itself – resulting in a simple, yet painterly texturing style.
Engine: Unreal Engine 4
Platform(s): PC
DEVELOPMENT
My love for Studio Ghibli films inspired me to recreate one of their iconic locations as a 3D environment. At the beginning of this project I created a moodboard of images from the movie so that I could use this as a guideline. I then attempted to figure out the shape of the environment by sketching the core components such as the staircase and doors to see how they fitted together in terms of scale. I started with a side on sketch to help me understand the proportions of the assets before blocking out the top down view. The scale and shape of this environment required a lot of iteration in UE4, it was difficult to use the movie as a reference as a lot of the background images of the clubhouse were inconsistent. It took a lot of trial and error to get the staircase to appear as tall and slender as it is in the movie - but this was a key goal of mine as it’s nearly always in shot when they’re in this location in the movie.
After designing the layout of the clubhouse, I started to think about how I could move the player around the environment and what sort of interactions I could put into the level. I think I took on too many roles in this project especially since this environment was also my first time creating modular assets, while attempting a “hand painted” texturing style.
