Concepts and Ideation - Project A to Z #1: Asphalt Avenue

So I was thinking about some old school video game stages the other day. I always liked how a lot of Kirby games had alliterations for the names of the levels--Vegetable Valley, Orange Ocean, Candy Constellation--you get the idea (and actually, Sonic CD did this as well).  I thought it was pretty creative, and I came up with a few of my own (much harder than it sounds) just for fun because I liked the idea of naming stages like that.

But, I've also been trying to think of a way to improve my environment work since it's one of my biggest weaknesses at the moment. I figured, why not combine the two into a project?

I'm going to try and do concepts of environments based on 2-word alliterative phrases. I'm shooting for doing one each day for every letter of the alphabet starting with A. The project is really about improvement, but I see no reason not to have fun while doing it. I've already drafted a list with at least 3 phrases for every letter, now the hard part is creating an environment that really matches the words in each title. But there's room for some crazy looking places too so it should be fun.

I try not to go past 2 or 3 hours on each since I have to crank out one per day, but we'll see. Hopefully by the time I get to Z we'll see some noticeable improvement in technique. This is all to force me to study perspective, mood, composition, etc. on a much more precise level, and generate a wide array of ideas while adhering to certain guidelines.

Anyway, with that explanation out of the way, here's the first entry: Asphalt Avenue.