STUDIO EDIT (1/20/2020 2:20pm PST)
Thanks to everyone who commented and contributed to this thread. At various points throughout the game development lifecycle, it is necessary to capture the feel and quintessence of an idea, location, prop, or character design, so that a mood and vocabulary can be created that allows designers and artists to have a conversation about what it is they're creating. These mood pieces are generally put together very quickly and often act as a precursor or prototype to the concept art and grey box assets being created by the team of designers and artists at a studio.
The image, which we removed, is one such mood piece. It was created as part of an internal discussion between our principal concept artist and the designers about the nature and structures of the Kypiq biomes. Snipehunter felt that it looked cool and, being a mood piece, (when combined with sufficient explanation) would help people understand a bit more about the process of making games. It would also allow us to track the piece over its evolution, from mood piece/paintover, to more fleshed out concept art, to a finalized design for the Pyqish architecture.
Unfortunately, the mood piece, being a photobashed compilation of several items of stock art with some rough paint over, was not received well or understood to be what it was: a means for us to visually communicate with each other (and now you) a mood or idea, not a finished concept or piece of art. We have taken the image down and locked this thread for further discussion, and removed all previous posts to discourage further replication or dissemination of the mood piece.
As a final note, if you'd like to see our in-game screenshots of what the Broadleaf forest currently looks like, check out this page on our official Wiki:
Biomes of Elyra
Sincerely,
Soulbound Studios
Hail Elyrians!
It is the first shiny day of the year for us here in the Elyrian community! It’s also our first week back from the studio’s holiday break, and it’s been a busy week! I’ll tell you about it a little bit, but first, feast your eyes on this mood piece I found in the repository:
[Image Deleted]
Now, for the folks that care about how the sausage is made, let me explain a bit: This is a mood piece. It isn’t meant to be a 100% accurate representation of all things Kypiq, rather it’s meant to evoke a sense of their style as it meshes with the environment. As the name of this sort of piece implies, the objective is to evoke the right mood that we expect the Kypiq world to evince.
So, for example, missing from this piece are the large shelf fungi and the overall scope of the building sites is smaller than you’ll see in world. That said, it still captures the play of light against the rich reds and greens you can expect to see in the Kypiq environment, and thus gives a good idea of what Kypiq settlements can and will feel like.
As for this week, wow, talk about hitting the ground running! As Serpentius mentioned in the latest community journal, this week we welcomed several new team members to the studio, and we’re already incorporating their talents in UI and UX design. Both CortanaV (UX Designer) and Mokume Hada (UI Artist) have some great experience, working on several installments of the Halo franchise and both Destiny games, between them.
I looked over Mokume_Hada’s shoulder yesterday as I was leaving the studio and, I’ve got to say, even just the stuff he was “noodling around with” to test his equipment was amazing! Likewise, CortanaV is already putting her UX design skills to work on SoE and other user experience related areas. I’m so happy to have them here, their talents and their experience are a real boost to our production efforts!
Meanwhile, we got back to work on the pre-alpha, on the game team! This week I’ve personally been building some of the game UI to support setting client options and refine the character creation/selection process to be a bit more “player friendly” for what we’re focusing on now. At the same time, the team is also working on the procedural dungeon generator and putting the finishing touches on the pre-alpha traversal mechanics I’ve been discussing with you all over the last couple of months.
We’re also putting some significant effort, on the game design side, into some of the more minute details of world building this week. This includes finalizing the symbology for certain heraldry elements that are unique to each tribe. There is some awesome imagery related to that effort coming out of the studio, but it’s not quite time to show it yet. Still, in the coming months, I suspect we’ll be talking about it a lot more. So stay tuned!
But, in the meantime, stay shiny my friends!
