Rift Dungeons; Hammerknell Process

Hammerknell was one of the best dungeons in Rift in my opinion.  I had the privilege of designing and executing one of Hammerknell's chambers.  I was given a LOT of freedom on this room and was basically just told to design a compelling room with statues. 

 I wanted to make sure the room could showcase the statues well and still have a good sense of direction, guiding the player to reach the top tier and advance to the next chamber.

I quickly mocked up the space for the room.  Usually I take a few tries to get something that  I like.  At first the verticality was completely underplayed.  Even though this was just one room I still wanted the player to feel like they were fighting to reach a difficult goal.  Adding more height to the tiers and elevating the end goal chamber made for more of an uphill battle and also allowed me to show off all the different kinds of statues I would eventually make.

When given the chance to execute my own designs I'm always conscious of shape hierarchy   I want the biggest shapes to read clearly from far away and compel the player to view up closer where I would put more nitty-gritty details.  Here are some original designs I was able to crank through and get into this room:

Implemented:

Maybe the most American model I have ever made:

 Implimented: