Immortals Fenyx Rising : A New God - Trials of the Olympos

On top of my level art duties, I had the opportunity to take in charge the artistic direction for the environments of this DLC episode.
I should add that project was 99% done remotely in work from home at Ubisoft, from preprod to polish/debug ! So thanks a lot for the trust put in by everyone involved.
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Here are some screenshots from some of the Trials of the Olympos (see other post for the Palace) where I did the level art (again, no asset creation except for placeholders and concepts).
The goal was to add a pleasant visual overlay on top of the level designers puzzles, fitting the artistic direction, and bringing variations depending of the God owning the trial (Ares, Hephaistos, Aphrodite, Athena, and Zeus).
I did 12+ of them including Zeus' God Trial, and I want to thank my colleagues Jonathan Leclerc, Marc Brassard, Maxime Larivière, Alain Labadie, Stéphane Gaudette, and Victor Desrochers for their much needed help on the rest of them (bless you guys).
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Taking in charge the artistic direction was challenging and enjoyable, and had a well scoped difficulty for me (maingame art direction done, build on top of that solid base).
My main task was to drive a new theme for this DLC, by choosing a new color palette, mood and sky, new visuals and compositions, and to find utility in what had already been created with the props and architecture kits in the maingame, and revamp things here and there : we had to stray from the blue/purple, and austere, nocturnal setting of the Tartarus Vaults, to go for a white/green/gold theme, bathed in the setting sun and the soft clouds, with a come back from vegetation and waterfalls.
There was also a differenciation that had to be made between the Gods different districts and trials, so there was sub thematization to replicate across all the levels, with optimized efforts.
We did an exception for the warm mood with Zeus' Trial, by switching to a stormy and overcast blue, in order to contrast things up.
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The main idea was to have a floating "Castle in the Sky" effect on all our levels, supported by cloud shapes.
I created and tested placeholders to embody a new recipe able to do that, within the constraints of pre existing and carefully selected architecture kits : "deconstructed" bottoms for the plateforms with stones falling off, with gradient shapes/inverted pyramid in order to lighten the visual weight of these big temples and tholos.
To support that, I also added arches everywhere I could, to bring lightness in the paths and façades, bringing more roman/medieval codes to the greek landmarks. The use of the round shapes and paths from the maingame Aphrodite kit (maingame) was essential to the success of the new visuals (thanks to Hugo Lamarre for this kit, and to Pierre-Luc Lavoie for the Vaults kit).
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In top of that, I was the point of contact for directions on all things visual : I enjoyed communicating ideas with many teams (concept art, lighting, sky, textures, architecture, props, VFX) through meetings/discussion threads supported by references and rough concepts I would do to illustrate my points more clearly. For example I closely directed a set of statues, thrones, banners and mosaic flagstones and decorations for the Gods since it was emblematic to the episode.
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So the trials levels are the result of this overall artistic input described above, my own level art, the level design/world direction from Michael Giguères and his team, and the work from all the art teams behind this DLC : a veeeery big thanks to all the people that made this vision possible ! The results may not be perfect, but they are a beautiful testament of what we achieved in these not so easy conditions.
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A lot of the new props, architecture parts, and textures were made by Olivier Tréhet, Dimitri Alexis, Felix Robitaille and the artistic teams at Technicolor (thanks to Antoine Barbot for the outsourcing bridge).
Lighting/mood, skybox and clouds were made by Pierre-Luc Ouellet, Francis Barrette and Pierre-Paul Gingras.
Thanks to Thierry Dansereau and Julien Galoudec for their input and trust in our work, and to the concept artists I worked with, Asim Steckel and Anthony Iammarino.
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https://www.artstation.com/oliver87
https://www.artstation.com/dimsane
https://www.artstation.com/felixrobitaille
https://www.artstation.com/plouellet