This façade design and color elevation come from a theoretical attraction concept based on the history of illegal moonshine running to my home town of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The attraction itself sees guests test their skills as moonshine runners as they take the wheel of a 1940 Ford in a high speed chase through the North Carolina backwoods. The Façade itself is part of the attractions final scene and unload, where Guests have narrowly escaped the law and deliver their cargo of whiskey in the city of Winston-Salem.
Step one of the visual design process was to walk around Winston-Salem and collect reference photos of buildings that would have existed in 1947 when the attraction takes place
The next step was to design a building façade as a 3D model. This one in particular takes inspiration from a few buildings built in the 1920s.
Having worked as a colorboard artist, I knew that one of the more tedious steps can be masking out a piece of artwork, especially for heavy weathering. By paying attention to how I constructed my 3D model, I was able to streamline this process by using object colors to create a mask system that I could import directly to Photoshop.
In the setting of the attraction, the building would be at least 20 years old and would have survived a period of economic difficulty and some neglect as the country focused on the Second World War. As such, I have left the building dirty and relatively weathered.
This project is ongoing and will eventually include a broader array of similar visuals based on the land and architecture of Winston-Salem and surrounding areas in central North Carolina.
