Posts Tagged ‘art’
Practice Trumps Talent
Tuesday, February 16th, 2010
Before I go and do another IGDA profile, just wanted to share a fantastic post from Gareth Fouche’s Scars of War Blog. Scars of War is a 3D RPG being built with Torque.
In essence, Gareth looks at a guy on DeviantArt who decides, inspired, that he is going to start painting and drawing, and keep going until he’s good. I’ll leave it to you to click the link and see the results.
Starting my own studio has an exercise in ignorance. Just about every day I’m asked a question or confronted with a decision that I have no basis for dealing with. And hey, I’m supposed to know all this stuff by now, right? It’s not like I started this all yesterday. And man, I hate making mistakes.
Seeing this guy’s art… that’s inspirational.
Courtesy of the Rampant Coyote.
Dev Blog: Player City Concept Art
Friday, August 14th, 2009
I know, I know. Who, exactly, do I think I am? What kind of person makes one introductory blog post and then is completely incapable of following it up with even one thing of real substance?
If you’re asking that question, then this is obviously your first time on the internet since 2004 and–just between the two of us–you’re going to need to toughen up a little before you go to any other sites or–god forbid–turn off SafeSearch.
That being said, today I -do- have a substantive post to make. BEHOLD: tantalizing concept art!
What we have here is a sketch detailing the player civilization’s capital city (showcasing the kind of unfinished door that’s very In this year.)
I’m looking at a few things in this image:
- What time period is this particular civilization supposed to be evocative of?
- What real-world cultures form a touchstone for this civilization?
- What are the overall cultural attitudes that are being expressed by this image?
Time Period
I’m trying to work within a time period that is somewhat later than a lot of fantasy–straddling a line between the heavy nautical themes of Colonial era Europe and the rougher architecture and more militarily utilitarian design of medieval cities. Since creating a compelling, flavorful and interesting visual aesthetic for a game-world involves being very specific about the choices you make, the historical middle ground of these two time periods isn’t entirely useful in this instance. Both components of each time period (focus on sea-travel and trade / claustrophobic fortressing) are important for the player civilization in a way that they just weren’t during the bulk of the Renaissance.
Touchstone Cultures
This issue is really a lot more complicated than I’m going to get into here, and is likely to be the subject of a future blog post (in 2010, if my previous track record is any indication.) So, assuming that I’ll talk about the difficulties (and necessity) of real world touchstones in world building later, I’m just going to quickly discuss the choices that we -did- make.
In order to provide a somewhat grander setting than the dark and hunched castles of medieval Europe, while maintaining the sense of isolation that they do so well we decided to expand the enclosed city in the one direction available: up.
This meant that we were taking cues from a lot of coastal and mountain cultures; in particular towns in Greece and Italy. You can see that influence in the way that buildings are clustered together (although that also speaks to the influence that came from London) and in the way that they hug cliff faces. On the other hand, the aforementioned London influence (courtesy of a trip there back in May) is evident in the construction of the buildings themselves. There’s something briny about all the stone in England that, to me at least, is indelibly associated with the more dangerous aspects of maritime life.
I suppose what I’m saying is that the water of the Mediterranean is just too inviting for our purposes. It’s nothing personal.
Overall Cultural Attitudes
Clearly, we were looking for this architecture to describe a strong maritime bent to the culture without resorting to ham-fisted representations of an oceanic theme. Frankly, we’re creating a nation of ex-sailors, not Aquaman’s Atlantis. In addition to this, however, we want to communicate that the culture the player is going to take control of is traditionally fairly formal and backward-looking. In that end, we went with architectural styles that, while not reserved, was less than ostentatious (sturdy stone and wood over filigree and flash).
Conclusion
So, there you have it: a sneak peek into our art direction. Next time, we’ll talk about the difficulties that arise when you try to create a fantastic world while maintaining your progressive street cred.
(Note from Scott – when he talks about having progressive street cred, he’s on his own. I’m lucky I can spell that term correctly.)
First Peek at Heritage Concept Art
Tuesday, April 14th, 2009
Scanned from Graham’s sketchbook:
Screw Art (Or, Passion & Indie Game Dev)
Friday, February 27th, 2009
The past couple years has given us a growing chorus of people cajoling game makers to take it up a level, imploring us to make Great Art – and a growing number of indies are doing it. Games like Passage and Flower, amongst many others, are making us think. This is A Good Thing.
Paying attention to this zeitgeist as an indie dev, though, can screw you over hard. Here’s why.