Welcome to Sky Rome!

I've always loved the idea of floating palaces! My idea here is inspired by the upbeat and bright style of Studio Ghibli and classic works of fiction like Cloud City from Star Wars or the Caspartine from Stardust. A magnificent city, high above the humdrum of civilization below, drifting magically through the clouds. I tried to capture a little of that magic into the electric blue glow of the engines, the crystal clear pool waters, and the almost too-green trees.

Since this was a fantastical scene I wanted to try giving it a fantastical style. I usually shoot for photorealism so this was quite a learning experience for me! I found it was really easy to be lax about certain aspects of the render but excuse them away as style motifs, which is something I really did not want to do. I sort of had to relearn how I constructed a render, and pick carefully what needed to look good and what could be passable and what could be stylistic.

I used Blender for all the modeling, texturing, and rendering, and edited and color-graded in Quickshot. This took about a week to make from start to finish.