Introduction
When first thinking about an asset for an environment I first thought of a dragon skeleton, being resurrected in some necromantic festival, however that isn’t exactly unique. Another idea I had was an infectious moss that had spread over and ruined a town, however both of these ran into the same problem, it was done before so how would mine stand out as unique?
Then I decided to change my perspective from the surface, to underground. I was playing Skyrim at the time, hence the fantasy grabs, and it has a lot of underground areas. Problem is I have never made an environment before, so no way was I going to pick a dungeon, I needed something more simple, then it hit me after a routine trip to a mine for gold, why not a mine?
Mineshafts after all are just tunnels with wooden supports, but then I run into the same problem, that isn’t unique. So I turned to what I tried before, a dragonic skeleton feels really cool, but how could that be fit into a mineshaft of all things? And then the moss destroyed all it spread to, but moss isn’t really the first thing you expect in a mine, so what is?
Example pictures I gathered of skyrim mines:
Well fossils exist, and they are skeletons of dead stuff, and dragons are plenty magical so who is to say it can’t be magical even after death? But could I tie it into the mineshaft more?
What is underground in fantasy also known for being magical? Well crystals of course, even in Skyrim the soul gems are how you enchant weapons and armor, even using souls for this, so maybe the dragon skeleton could be crystallized and the soul is trying to escape its trap of its own body.
But then again, dragons don’t just become crystals, how could I make a dragon crystal and make sense? Well we can look back at enchantments or magic in general, at least half of fantasy is waving your hands after doing something and blaming magic, so why couldn’t some enchanted weapon do the same? It even makes sense, if you do this the dragon’s soul would be trapped in the crystal like said before, so it can’t get out or be used by necromancers to make draco liches (basically resurrected dragon skeletons).
But then as I went over this idea, I wanted to be sure it was unique, so I didn’t want to use these overused types, such as a dragon, people love dragons there has to be a crystalised one out there somewhere. So how about a big snake? Those are still dangerous and scary, and means the skull will look different too. Then for the weapon instead of the obvious sword lets do a spear, because there are yet again so many enchanted swords, so this will hopefully stand out more.
Snake and dragon skull for comparison:
Figure 2, Snake Skull (Etsy, 2023)
https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/873469482/real-11-cm-python-skull-snake-skull
Figure 3, Skyrim Dragon Skull (Skyrim 2011)
https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/652477047/skyrim-dragon-skull
So thus my asset idea was made, a crystalised snake skull with a spear stabbed into it (thinking of stabbed into the top jaw, so show it off more and make it in the center so it feels more as part of the asset then an addon.
References:
- Figure 1, Skyrim Soul Gems (Skyrim, 2011)
- Figure 2, Snake Skull (Etsy, 2023)
- Figure 3, Skyrim Dragon Skull (Skyrim 2011)