Ascension: SkyBox Concept Creation

I wrote this blog for Ascension- originally posted Tuesday, July 1, 2008 @ 9:00 pm

Hi all! I’m the Lead Environment Head working on Ascension: Triumvirate. Tonight’s first blurb will be on the Battle Front concept material I was tasked with creating for Ascension, and perhaps more so on story-telling. You’ll have to forgive me as I’m more prone towards rambling when I’m not creating art. So just slap me around a little if I tend to get side-tracked.

So! A common element to nearly every game currently on the market is a game’s story, and its story-tellers. These story-tellers needn’t always be people or non-player characters, but can be props, scenery, sounds, triggers and lighting. The best story telling is done when the player doesn’t consciously perceive it. It’s also called immersion.

For me, the background scenery required for Ascension is important, vitally so, as it accounts for much of what the player sees. It then should help to tell the player our story, and act as its own story teller; we wanted the scenery to give the player a feeling of complete immersion.

There are twenty-two locations in the Ascension: Triumvirate game world and each has its own concept piece, laying the foundation for each levels development. These concept images are only slivers of what will eventually be designed, but they’re meant to stir the imagination, and to get your mind trained to look for the story in each.

For starters, when I sit down and begin a drawing for t he environment concepts, I ask myself:

• What is happening here?
• What should the player know about each location?
• Where is the sun, and which major celestial bodies are visible?
• How near is the battle front to the celestial body that is closest, is it near a planet or moon, how vast does the planet appear?
• How dark is the level, and is the sun the only source of light?
• How much cosmic dust surrounds this place, is it thick, hard to see through?
• What is the predominant color here, and how saturated should it be?
• How far away is this location, should the players feel alone- deserted, or are they near their power base?

All these questions tend to lead toward elements of t he larger story. Once I have answered these questions, I tend to draw focal points tying them into the art, and I try to answer each question not in words, but in the art itself.

The Battle Front concept art is designed to be the springboard for the eventual realization of the Sky Box in each level (or the 3D background the player perceives). For those of you interested in learning more about Sky Boxes, I’ll post another blog shortly devoted just to them.

Well thanks for taking the time to read thru my notes, I know I tend to ramble, by the way it’d be worse if I were talking in person, as I have no delete button to go back and edit.

Feel free to check out my SkyBox Concept pieces for the upcoming game Ascension: Triumvirate here.