Some Snow Texture/Design Ideas

I was thinking about how we can create the snow so it doesn’t look too similar to the snow from Frozen, and started researching some textures. What if the snow behaved more like brown sugar or wet sand, swelling and splitting into plate-like chunks (with ice-blue shadows) if, say, a foot or a pick was dragging across it, and leaving perfectly-formed (ice-blue) footprints like footprints in sand?

^I like the look of the deep rivets on this one, too.

^ And maybe it could leave crumbly residue on the climber’s boots?

^ Or it could go in this direction, cracking like hardened clay and not stirring much at all?

As for the aesthetic design of the snow/ice, I stumbled upon pictures of blue alabaster that I thought were potentially cool designs. The ice (and/or snow) could sport a random array of blue swirly lines, or blue lines that could correspond with the “hardened clay” look. Better still, we could use the blue alabaster lines to create a circular line pattern following the ram’s horn so the mountain looks like an actual ram’s horn.

^ Quick-paint thingy

Hopefully this helps!