Week 12 - Art Style Guide

Lighting / Shader Research

One aspect that is keeping our team on edge is how the final game will look in comparison to the two main contemporiaries we're following: Firewatch and The Long Dark. To better research this topic, I decided to make a lighting scnario to better mimic and extrapolate what aspects of these two games we want to take inspiration from. I utilized POLYGON's Sci-Fi City Pack

Environmental Design

Rich Pocket in Poor Area (Rich Business/Warehouse with rich/fancy establishments near it, surrounded by poor buildings) - No Nature versus Nature

I continued to use the POLYGON's Sci-Fi City Pack to create a version of the environment in the lower sector with a pocket of the rich upper crusts invading. These scenes were meant to focus on how we could visually convey the difference between the two communities. The lower sector was focused on brutalist architecture as well as taking inspiration from street vendors and what kind of props might be outside their stalls.

The second version involved introducing small bits of nature to the scene, within Regradable, nature isnt taking over the land, but rather being slowly reintroduced into a world that forgot about it. As such, unlike games like Horizon Forbidden West or The Last of Us where nature is reshaped into human communities or retaking the land, we are seeing it in it's infancy.

Movement VFX

VFX - Movement - Motion lines or motion blur

For this VFX theres a lot of different routes that can be taken, in this instance I wanted to focus on the three aspects of the game that really stood out to me: the fast pace movement of the character, the passive nature of our character, and their primal connection to nature. During our ideation phase, the idea of leaning onto butterfly/moth imagery with the transformation from caterpillar to caccoon to butterfly representing the journey of our character.

Core references / Reference video