Environment color keys. Durno.

Posted on March 25, 2013 by Pablo Rodríguez

As part of the concept art process, our illustrators are responsible for creating the required atmosphere for each of the scenarios where the warriors of Skara will fight each other. Obviusly, it is not a good idea to start drawing without a clear direction; they need to know the ambience, the people who resides there, the weather, where the light comes from…

Those kind of decissions are taken at a very early stage, creating the environment color keys for every single scenario. The color keys are small thumbnails, where the concept artist avoid to go deep in every detail, but choose to balance the color palette and the ranges of tones to recreate the desired atmosphere.

In this case, for example, we needed to recreate a rainy Durno settlement in a mountainous area with a nearby waterfall. The artist does not need to create every detail, just to draw a quick sketch of the kind of light the environmet will have and the main tones that will be used. We tested four different color ranges, combinating brown, blue and green to see how the variations work on screen. Next step consists on choosing one of them and go deep into the creation of the first environment concept art.

Art pre-production. Durno concept art.

Posted on March 18, 2013 by Pablo Rodríguez

Ok, it’s time to let you see something truly stunning, we want to show the process of concept art for the creation of one of the first characters. We introduce you the first warrior of the Durno’s race.

As you can see, the first phase is to develop quick thumbnails with different variations of armor, clothes, hair, etc … Then the people in the art department meets to discuss what works and what does not, and what items can have technical problems when modeling and animating the character.

After that, we choose one of the poses and the concept-art team starts to draw variations of the basic equipment, which corresponds to the Durno private soldier. Of course, as users play Skara they may add pieces of armor, helmets and weapons with different decorations to customize their character to the maximum.

And finally, with the final decisions we need the character to be ready for the 3D modeling department. It is important to add rear and side views, of course, and also a T-pose, which will greatly assist modelers to correctly interpret each of the elements of the character.

We are willing to also show you the process of modeling and texture painting of the character. We are sure that you will love it!

Do it yourself workstations!

Posted on March 14, 2013 by Pablo Rodríguez

Well, we will not only describe you the building process of our game, but also we want to show how we built our office with our own hands, including some magnificent workstations to raise the computer screens, using the cheapest furniture available in IKEA.

In the early stages of the project, as you can remember, we bought a few tables and chairs, spending the minimum money possible. But when we started working we found a serious problem, the tables were too low and our modelers had to tilt her head to work properly, causing bad posture and future back pain. We must find a solution to elevate the computer screens, and we did not have enough cardboard boxes. So we chose to build a system that would allow us to also make some extra space for wires, and all the dolls that our workers have brought from home.

Our decision was to buy new boards, and mount on the tables with a three-inch legs and fix them with screws and flanges. We separated the tables eight inches from each one and made a hole in the top board, so the wires of the screens could pass through. The result is awesome, you can check on the next pictures.

Final price for every workstation: 30 euros.

It’s 3d time

Posted on March 8, 2013 by Miki Company

Hi everyone!

We just wanted to show a bit of the process we are working at the 3d department, here is one of the many assets we’ve got on our map, we’ve started building the basic shape on our 3d package where we create the basic structure and define the right topology for it. Then, take them to a sculpting sofware to do a detailed version where we extract the normal maps and paint a texture wich matches it, Normal mapping is a technique used for faking the lighting of bumps and dents. This technique is very useful for next gen games where details is everything.

First we create a diffuse map. A diffuse map is a texture you use to define a surface’s main colour. On this case many textures are painted by hand, trying to avoid using photografic references. When we have painted our diffuse map, we can also create a specular map, wich helps to define a surface’s shininess and highlight colour. I particularly like to create the specular map from the diffuse map, desaturating the whole image and then balancing every part with a colour filter like curves or levels wich help to get more contrast on it. It is very important to keep everyting separated by layers otherwise this process can be a bit tedious..

Here you can see a bit of this process explained.

Skara in five letters

Posted on March 4, 2013 by Jesús Luengo

Hi there!

Last week happened to be such an interesting time here at Skara Headquarters.

Maki Planas (Concept Artist) and David Llopis (3D Animator) joined the team, and we have already become a nice big family nowadays. For sure, they’ll be popping in here soon to introduce themselves. In the meanwhile, let me show you the five letters I meant when I wrote the title for this post:

Amazing, isn’t it? It’s our new logo, designed by Iván Castro, a full expert about caligraphy whose collaboration will be very valuable in the future, and we’re pretty excited about it!

Of course, there you have us all, celebrating the visit of our partners from London. Next week, some other people will be joining the staff, and there will be a lot of other things to talk about. But as I said, that will be next week.

Thanks for reading us and have a nice day!

Art pre-production. First 3D models.

Posted on February 20, 2013 by Pablo Rodríguez

Hi there! The production rate of the art department is reaching breakneck speeds. Our four 3D artists work a lot of hours modelling the concept-art sketches into three-dimensional elements to be used directly in the game. Do you remember the shield of the Durno warrior? Here you can see it the same way as will look on the game.

You can check the whole construction process of an item for videogames. First of all, the 3D artist receives the concept-art and starts the hi-res modelling. Then we need to resize it so it does not consume many resources, which is crucial when you want your game to have a proper flow. This process is known as retopology. Then, with the low-res model we apply different texture maps; the diffuse, specular and normal map, which make the object react differently with different illuminations during gameplay. Tthis way we can save resources and display an object in low resolution which will have a fantastic ingame look.

New staff: Jesús Luengo

Posted on February 15, 2013 by Jesús Luengo

Hi there!

Time to introduce myself in my new role as lead designer for Skara project.
When Pablo Rodríguez first asked me to move from Madrid to Barcelona in order to develop this game, I couldn’t help finding myself answering “Yes”.
Skara is such a dream for the most of us here: artists, developers and game designers. But let me tell you something: Sometimes dreams come true.

There are a lot of things going around here right now, but still I cannot say too much. Thus let me encourage you all to keep an eye on us and our blog in order to be the first to know everything coming up about Skara.

You won’t be dissappointed!

The coffee plant

Posted on February 8, 2013 by Miki Company

Hey!
It’s Miki Company writing , we’ve been very busy this week with the pre-production of “Skara - The Blade Remains” , so I was trying to find some time to write a nice post here.
My role in Skara as a environment artist is to create all the sets that surround the game, using all the phenomenal concepts created by David Güell and taking them to UDK.
Right now we are at a very concept stage but we have already have started to plan all the art work calendar and WOW! we are going to have a lot a work. Lucky we have bought that brand new coffee machine !!

Props and Pops

Posted on February 1, 2013 by Sergi Salvador

Hi there everyone ,
I m Sergio Salvador, enviroment and VFX artist . I have been working in the video games industry for 4 years
developing AAA and Kinect games such as Wanted, Motion Sports, Bond Legends ..

Two weeks ago I did join 8 Bits Studio and I have to say it s a great experience working close with so high talented team mates.

During those days I have been modeling some of the props for our project. Generating low poly meshes in Maya and sculpting
the detailed high poly meshes in Zbrush gives us very smooth results when projecting normal maps for organic shapes. This gives
us the opportunity to prototype and change the topology in a few clicks.

Modelling , texturing , litters of coffe, mini soccer games, chair fights and music all day long generates a friendly crazy
atmosphere ideal for working hard while enjoying what you do.

Office Live. Round one.

Posted on January 28, 2013 by Pablo Rodríguez

Crazy week in the new 8-bit Studio office. We had to buy a lot of things to equip our study, refrigerator, microwave, coffee maker and several tables and chairs for our art department, that is getting bigger and bigger.

Right now we have half of the team working full time, focusing on the art pre-production phase. Soon we’ll introduce to you our new addition, Miki Company, 3D environment artist that will model the maps and place them into UDK to be used during the game.

Last week we had to eat in restaurants daily, because we had not yet equipped kitchen. Now we can bring food from home or buy it in a nearby supermarket and cook it right here! We are checking what is the diet of each worker, which basically consists of coffee, rice, coffee, some pizza and a little more coffee. I woudn´t be surprised if we see one of our modelers climbed onto the roof one of these days.