Lighting of the Icarus Project

The Icarus Project was an Unreal level designed by Daedra Christopher which can be found here: https://www.daedrachristopher.com/portfolio/the-icarus-project/. The original lighting was good, but I wanted to increase the dark, moody atmosphere. Daedra really wanted to push the hopeless, oppressive feeling in this space, so I gleaned inspiration from many movies including Blade Runner, Robocop, Event Horizon, and Total Recall.

In order to achieve the strong emotions the designer wanted, I created an overall dark appearance to the atmosphere. I used spotlights and bloom to direct the player to points of interest, as if a guiding hand is reaching out from the darkness. The decals with emissive textures symbolize the oppressed people of Hong Kong station's hope and rebellion alike. The futuristic glowing neon kanji splashed across the grungy walls create visual breaks from tiling textures while adding saturated colour to draw the player further into the map.