This week David started to focus on the main look of the Durno´s character. Chosing the best from any thumbnail, he´s right now defining the visual identity of this race. Durno is the richest country on the Skara World; the warriors of Durno march into battle with golden armors, carrying a shield and a short sword. The main town of Durno is Jotheim, realm´s capital. Clan Adler reside in there, formed by the sons of noble rulers and citizens.

As you can see, we show you just the shield (too early to start sharing more concept sketches). David is trying to draw a very fierce warrior, but his armor and weapons reveal his aristocratic origin. Durno´s warrior are typical average characters. If what you want is a balanced fighter, strong and with good defensive skills, this should be your first choice. We thought it was a good idea to start the project developing this race for that reason, we could propose the average character and conceptualize from that point the larger and slower ones, or the smaller and agile ones.

So here we are. It’s been five days since we started pre-production art. We have a entire meeting room for us, that we have filled with documentation mudboards for armor, warriors and mountains, and dozens of pages with strange sketches. In the tiny unoccupied space we have our laptops and our drawing tablets, coffee, bottled water and packets of chocolate biscuits.

This week we focused on the main look of the game and the design of the first two races. We have drawn several thumbnails, discarded what does not fit and enhanced what inspired us most. In this process we have taken decisions that also affect the modeling and Game Design; the armor type modify the way each character fight and defend against enemy attacks, and modelers will have to make the armor pieces fit well and move correctly when animating the characters.

Next week we will begin to develop the final artwork for each of the characters, drawing them from different points of view to make the life easier for modelers.