Areia rangers exploring the lands around Jotheim, the main town of Durno.
Concept illustrations. Durno soldiers.
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Tag Archives: Durno
Concept illustrations. Fight among the trees.
A Shinse warrior facing a Durno soldier among the trees of Kerta, one of the main city of Taamvasa.
Environment color keys. Durno.
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.
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!
Art pre-production. First 3D models.
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.
Art pre-production. Week two.
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.
Art pre-production. First week.
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.