Hey all. I’m one half of the environment art team working on Demigod.  I have to mention at this point what a pleasure it is to work with such a dedicated and talented team.  The character work you have seen is tough to keep up with.  But Audrey and I are doing our best to create unique and exciting environments that will be as impactful as the other visuals in the game.  I tend to look at the environments in Demigod as another character.  Each one comes with its own challenges and rewards.  Our goal is to push to the limit the bounds of our fantastic universe and while at the same time immersing the player in a viable surrounding.   I think we are creating something pretty unique and special. 

The concept to fulfillment pipeline follows closely the process that Tim and Nate talked about with characters.  Either we go to the designers with an idea or they come to us with their needs.  From there we bounce ideas around until a vision forms.  Jessica, our level designer works on addressing game play dynamics, pacing, and layout.  All of these are tested and evaluated before it ever comes to art.  Making sure the game is exciting and meets design goals on the front end makes our lives much easier, cutting down on revisions and rework.  Once design is happy, the sky is the limit.  We are given free reign within the context of the game (which, frankly, is pretty broad) to create really fantastic stuff.  It’s really fun to see how creative we can get with a mythical “future fantasy” universe.  Nate is a great concept artist to work with.  One of the best things about my job here at GPG to be able to collaborate with him the other artists and be a part of that process.  

Once we have a solid concept we quickly mock up a “white box” version and start iterating.   From there it is all about fulfilling that vision artistically and technically.  We also work very closely with our graphics engineer, Ivan, who looks after our needs and makes sure we don’t get out of hand.   He’s very willing and capable of making our wishes come true no matter how crazy the idea.  At this point in the process we have a pretty fun tool chest to work with.   

We of course can’t give away all our little tidbits in the first journal entry so I’ll stop here for now. 

Audrey and I will be writing more in the future about environments, and we hope you will enjoy playing in our world as much as we are enjoying making it.

Best,

Ian Walker