FMP- Alteration in my idea!

For the last week or so, I've felt very stagnated regarding my project and my actual direction. I really still love the natural homes idea, but have not established theme or set design.

This has resulted in the need to alter my idea. Having discussed this with a peer, we both filled in those missing links. We developed a better theme and a more solid direction, keeping to the natural homes but  with a better version.

My new idea is still keeping the Wizard character ,but having him very miniaturized in his world. His home will be placed on a large tree stump that he has adopted with the idea of nurturing regrowth. The player would need to jump on to mushrooms/ fungi platforms to get to the top and travel to the Wizards house. The player will start to the left of the Wizards house at the point where the rooted bridge crosses the puddle stream. At the point of starting the player would become miniaturized so that the environment including the grass, leaves, ferns and rocks will be Goliath in comparison.

The animated film "Epic" shows the exact idea I am attempting to emulate as there is a clear example of how the normal environmental and natural descriptors within a piece can be shown as towering above the characters, or in this case the player.

Using Photoshop I decided to plan the design layout to give a clear idea of how the scene would be set.
The image screen above shows firstly the colour coded pallet displaying the main assets that would be used to construct the foundation of the level.

The bottom right, illustrates an birds eye view with descriptions of my layout, I kept it relatively simple on my first design so I can build on top of my next version.

On the second design I decided to extent the puddle stream and have it follow around half the perimeter of the scene, leading towards a small mushroom cave, to the right of the tree-stump, which could possibly house gaming assets for the player to chose from within the game.

I improved from my previous design by adding  more detail to the underfoot foliage giving the impression of depth to the area leading up to the puddle stream. The stream itself is showing a more natural flow which is reflected by the course of the stream being unstructured to show how overgrown and uneven the terrain is.

The following are mood boards which have different themes and will provide ideas and direction regarding the detail, colour and texture I would need to encompass within my own piece

The examples below shows mainly features I would like consider for the structure of the Wizard house as well as the bark detail of the surrounding environment.

The references showing fungi gives a good representation of those fungi that attach themselves to the tree-bark both living and dead.

These are some terrain and foliage images, with the exception of two of them which show newly baked bread. Surprisingly the crust of the bread gives good ideas for sculpting out the bark. The other images give ground coverage ideas related to leaves, ferns, moss, new shoots of plants and thicker grass. The bottom of my reference sheet, there are game screen shots to help me visualize and seen  the high quality result I will attempt to acquire.