Monthly Archives: August 2013

The art of Joe Hill

Hi there, I’m Joe – resident jack-of-all-trades Artist, avid gamer and creator of fine rocks.

I’ve ventured onto the blog to show you guys a little of what I’ve been working on over the past couple of months.

As the new guy in the office I was first tasked to produce a small Eden Star-themed Diorama. With this piece I tried to think about the scene as a whole, focusing on composition and colour whilst incorporating organic and hard-surface modelling techniques to create the finished assets, which are rendered using the Unreal Engine.

eden star game art test joe hill

Once I had been ‘inducted’, my rock creating skills were put to the test, creating a series of 3D environment assets to use in the upcoming demo. To get Eden Star’s destructible environment looking awesome, a high degree of teamwork is required to ensure each asset deforms and breaks realistically in-engine. Luckily everyone who works here is amazing and very talented (they made me say that, send help).

eden star rock models joe hill

I’ve long been a huge fan of fantasy 2D artwork, and in particular, fantasy landscapes. As such I’m also really excited to currently be working on some high detail concept images, depicting the rich and varied world of Pharus 7. With these paintings I began with a series of thumbnails, focusing on creating a dynamic composition whilst incorporating various lore-related elements before working up the detail further after studying photo references. These kind of images are great for promoting discussion within the team and exploring different visual ideas quickly without having to create anything in 3D.

eden star environment paintings joe hill

The unique nature of the Eden Star art style has been challenging but incredibly refreshing to work with and as an industry newbie I feel very lucky to be part of its development. I’m also super-excited about showing off the game at Eurogamer in September.

See you there!

Environment Speed Painting by Gavin Li

Hi guys! By request of one of our watchers we’ve recorded one of our concept art tasks so you can see how we did it from scratch. As you’ll see from the video, sometimes we’d start a concept with more than one piece so we can explore multiple ideas and art directions within our given brief. For these pieces we let the gameplay inform and drive the design language of the environment into interesting new visual directions. These are just sketches for the concept phase so it may not reflect the final product and we hope you enjoy the video!

Thanks for all your comments and interest – hopefully we’ll get to talk to some of you soon at Eurogamer Expo!

Gavin Li – Concept Artist

 

environment concepts gavin li

Free-running in Eden Star

We’ve got another video for you!

This week, John and Matt give you a quick peek at the Free-running mechanic in Eden Star, enabling you to traverse the world in a smooth, flowing, athletic way thanks to our procedural mantling and wall-jumping system.

Sorry about the poor-quality video capture. Trust me, i looks much nicer in-game. Also even though John is playing here with an Xbox 360 controller, it plays just as well on mouse and keyboard.

There’s also a bit more wanton destruction thrown in there for you, including some updated MATA-Tool PFX. We’re in the process of overhauling everything, making sure we deliver the best possible experience for you at the Eurogamer Expo this September!