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New staff: 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
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
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.
Our new office!
We finally have the keys of our new office!. Today was a crazy Friday in which we have gathered all the workers in the art department for cleaning, fighting against dust and mount our first furniture. As you can see, we have almost nothing, just a few chairs and tables, but we’ve had a great day and now we know each other a little better.
Next week we´ll start working full time. I will be in London attending the Mobile Games Forum 2013, where I hope to make several interesting contacts and find out about the technologies that will come in the future in game development, so I don´t know what I will find when I come back.
These last two weeks, David and I have been filling in part of the concept-art. Now that we have our modelers on staff time to transfer the drawings to three-dimensional models. We hope to show you the results soon.
Motivation comics
One of the motivational comics I’ve drawn to encourage our staff to come and clean our new office and assemble IKEA furniture.
Art pre-production. Week four
Time to make some drawings to define parts of the Khärn warrior armor. David did a great job specifying some of the designs that you can see in the first sketch. Our peaceful friend, as you can see, is ideally equipped for war, with metal parts that probably stole one time in a distant battlefield.
Kharn Warriors do not have the level of technology needed to shape the metal, they are only interested to tear enemies and eat their insides! So after every battle they wander among the corpses searching for interesting weapons and armor pieces.
Anyway, an average-sized Khärn warrior could only use a sword belonging to another race as a toothpick.
Art pre-production. Week three
We are so proud to introduce you the newest race on the Skara world; Khärn. Newest because it´s the latest one to be created, as you can check they are not the most technological advanced race ever. Big guys carrying really big swords, what could go wrong?
David did a great work with the sketches, making an interesting approach about the biggest warriors on the game. At first, we imagined full iron dressed figthers, but have seen this kind of characters in a lot of games, so he tried to develope them in depth, visually describing them as almost prehistoric hunters, covered with fur and animal carcasses.
Personally, I’m willing to see these animals in teh game, delivering blows and spreading terror among their enemies.
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.
A brief history of Skara
The main idea of The Blade Remains came to me a long time ago; I started writting the first sketch of the game design in the beginning of 2009. I spent so many days writting about the history, the races, the lands and the general context of the territory that forms the world of Skara.
In 2012, after many changes and revisions, the first version of the Game Design Document was complete. I enjoyed drawing the earlies concepts for the warriors and the environments where battles would take place, but it was obvious I was going to need help from someone who draw better than me, so I contacted David Güell, concept artist, cartoonist, animator and a good friend. In late November we started planning all the art needed to start the development of the game. We have only two months to create much of the pre-production work, since the modellers will join the team in February, and so programmers will in March.
As yet we have no space to work, we have moved to the publishing oficce directed by Fernando, David´s father. It is an old apartment in the Eixample, renovated and fully equipped. It also has the world’s most beautiful old elevator. We’ll have to thank Fernando for letting us a space to work these months, no one should be surprised if he appears in the game as a barbarian, carrying a giant pencil instead of a sword.
Tomorrow we are going to start drawing… and we are excited and thrilled.
Welcome!
Welcome to the Skara - The Blade Remains development blog , a multi-player action game where you can show your skill with the sword in frantic games against opponents from around the world.
We will use this blog to show you all the gestation of a video game from conception of the idea through the concept-art, modeling and programming.
Enjoy and stay tunned!