Welcome travelers from lands afar! I’m Alex, 2D Artist at Triumph Studios.
It has been a little while since we last showcased what the art team has been up to, so we’re back! Slip into your sandals, grab your spears and join me for a journey through The Art of Archon Prophecy!
A fate foretold…
Architect Culture
The Architect culture is inspired by greco-mesopotamian themes and has strong ties to belief, worship and creation. In order to visually represent these aspects, the designs needed to have a way to show what affinity was being worshipped. In addition to showing their dedicated affinity, each unit has their own ‘artisan tool’. These artisan tools tie into the main function of any given unit, think: magical boots, bows and tesseracts.
With affinity, artisan tools, and our cultural themes in mind we start with some initial sketches to create an overview of the culture.
First things first: thumbnails. Every unit needs to be visually distinct from one another, especially when on the battlefield. A great way to do this is to make use of shape distribution and material differences; ‘blocking out’ what different support units would wear (typically sporting more cloth) compared to martial units (typically more ironclad).
Early thumbnail concepts for the Architect Culture
While working on these thumbnails, we realized that we wanted to give the player the opportunity to make the artisan tools stand out from the other metals present in the units. So, we created a dual-armor color system to allow for more customization.
Then we move to the exploration phase, this is the time to zoom in on the units and figure out specifics! What do their Artisan Tools look like? What kind of visual theme do we want to tie in? During this stage there is a lot of back and forth within the 2D art team, since it is easier (and cheaper) to make large-scale changes here before the concept continues on to 3D.
Early exploratory sketches for the Surveyor and Cultivator units
During this phase we are searching for a strong visual thematic that sets our Architect culture apart from other more generic Greek-inspired fantasy cultures. Eventually, we found our theme in a new direction: triangles.
Later exploratory sketches for the Surveyor and Guardian units
This hit the spot, and so every unit was designed with this shape language in mind! The combination of angular shapes and pleated cloth creating wing-like patterns made the entire culture feel sophisticated (with the side effect of giving the 3D team some fabric-induced headaches…).
A fun fact is that every unit has a different Greek god tied into their design, with some being more subtle than others. The Guardian unit, for example, is tied to Athena. You can see a resemblance to her owl when looking more closely at the (upside down) spear design.
Spear head resembles an abstracted owl
Final 2D lineup
When the lineup is finished in 2D, it’s time to add another dimension and get them in the game!
Final in-game lineup
Chariots
What is a good army without chariots? This new mount is highly customizable as it comes with several animal options (yes, even crocodiles) and changes color according to your faction and armour colors.
Early chariot concept
3D Sculpt
In-game visuals, including big lizards riding bigger lizards
New Forms: Elysians & Ancients
Archon Prophecy isn’t just about architects. It is, as you might have guessed, about the fated return of the Archons, and the juxtaposition of the holy and the… less holy. With that, we added 2 new forms for both sides of the holiness coin: The Elysians and the Ancients!
The Elysians
In-game gif of the Elysian form
Elysians are the revamped Highmen (name changed for… good reason), known from earlier Age of Wonders games. Their new name ‘Elysian’ is derived from “Elysium”, the Greek concept of afterlife and an adjective meaning “divinely inspired, perfect”.
We wanted our divine-touched form to have long flowing hair and angelic features (winged ears, feather growth, additional eyes). But most importantly: we wanted them to be very appealing.
Elysian variations
The Ancients
Grumpy and dusty, the Ancients are older and wiser than time itself. We wanted a corrupted humanoid form that could stand in for the player fantasies of ancient warlocks and corrupted mages.
Early Ancient concepts
Our early concepts leaned too close to existing undead visuals, instead we wanted the Ancients to feel like they’d overcome their arcane corruption using magical enhancements and prosthetics. With this in mind, 3D jumped into the ring and did some concept sculpts which totally hit this mark:
Concept sculpts combining metal masks with badass scars and skullets
Final in-game visual
City and Monuments
Home to the architects, their city should be imposing, impressive, and true to the Architect name: a feat of engineering. Initially starting out as a Greek-like temple with scattered housing, the city grows to be more cohesive and connected with every upgrade. In the final tiers, the very buildings themselves seem to come alive through their magicks.
Tier 1: Scattered and disorganized
Tier 4: Floating, breathing and a connected whole
While building your monument, we needed the chosen affinity to be recognizable at every tier. And so came the idea to incorporate the affinity iconography into the very fundamentals of the great temple.
Concept art for the different building stages of the monument
The final monument model in its different stages
Wonders and Regions
Archon Prophecy is not lacking in world map content either. This expansion introduces a new wonder, new regions, and new tactical combat maps! In all of these, we emphasized the Archon building style seen in previous Archon creations such as the Golden Ziggurat. Many new ‘building blocks’ were created so these could be used and transformed to the Environment Art team’s liking.
New Archon Assets
What could make a building feel even more blessed and holy? That's right! Stained glass. A custom material system was made so that any 2D image fed into it could be transformed into a beautiful work of glass panels.
2D Window Designs
In-game windows, spot the floor reflection!
All of these assets were combined to create the tactical combat map for the new Archon Observatory wonder.
In-game screenshots of the Archon Observatory TC map
The Archon Observatory also needed a world map structure, one that proved difficult to nail down a concept for. We did not want to create your ‘generic dome with a large telescope’, and many of the initial concepts looked too sci-fi. Eventually we iterated towards a temple-like structure, which hovers above a projected star system, like it is aligning with the stars themselves.
2D to 3D process for the Archon Observatory
In-game GIF of the Archon Observatory
Archon Prophecy also features a new clime decoration option we call ‘Blessed’. With its sprawling ‘yellow-ery’ and glowing trees, regions using this decoration type can be found in your worlds and bring a new divine atmosphere to your battlefield!
An Archon’s crusade in a blessed realm
Discover new Blessed custom regions:
A snapshot of the regions you can run into
Or find the new, Blessed landmark: The Celestial Fountain. This place of holy water showers the area in Celestial Rain.
Celestial Fountain
Wildlife
Now that we’ve talked about the divine realms and aesthetics, I think it is finally time to talk about the Archon’s entourage!
Consisting of paladins, spirits, titans, and angels; the Archon forces are an imposing bunch. Embodying righteousness and law, they are clad in golden armor and light cloths, radiating like the sun. These are some of the members of their ranks:
The Paladin is a fierce knight, sporting a large cloak and hood, her armor covered with feather and sun motifs showing her dedication to all that is just.
Concept art for the Paladin unit
Concept art for the Paladin’s shield
Final in-game model
The Vigil was designed as follows: more wings and more eyes = more better. It took some animation and VFX magic to make it all work, considering the sculpt itself is just a bunch of static rings on top of each other.
The gloriously biblically accurate Vigil unit
The Titans have returned from AOW3! This time, not just as undead. Although we did honour the original’s design with our new Undead Titan.
AOW3 Undead Titan design compared to the new (living) Archon Titan design
New Titans in game
Last but not least: the Astra. There were a lot of iterations to get the feeling right for this 4-winged saviour. She wields a sword with holy flames and has halos wrapping around her head. Blindfolding her like Lady Justicia further reinforces her role as lawkeeper.
Early 3D model, showcasing a certain Elysian influence
The Astra.
Tomes and UI
Many of these wildlife units can be summoned yourself by using the new tomes! Archon Prophecy features 4 new tomes: Tome of Virtue, Prophecies, the Archon and the Revenant. Each tomes’ visuals tie into a different aspect of their theme, for example: Tome of Virtue’s cover is shaped like the Paladin’s Shield.
Tome of Virtue Sketches
Final tome art for Prophecies and Virtue
The tomes are brought to life with some awesome VFX, here are a couple from the Tome of Prophecies:
GIFs of Tome of Prophecies spells
The Tome of the Archon and Revenant are thematically opposite, but hewn from the same stone. So, having the tomes be visually opposite to one another fit them thematically well.
Tome of the Archon sketches
Tome of the Revenant and Tome of the Archon
GIFs of Archon and Revenant spells
All of these spells also needed spell icons:
Speaking of icons- there were a lot of them. The Mage hero class rework (now Elementalist class) and the Battlesaint class demanded their sacrifices, along with the usual suspects. All of these icons are a great way to add flavour to the upgrades that don’t visually show up on the map.
We were feeling nostalgic with this expansion, thus the AOW3 UI skin is also making a return for Archon Prophecy, with an added lick of paint.
AOW3 UI
The new Archon Prophecy UI
A Familiar Face
Speaking of returning, so is Anon! He too has gotten a visual update, in this case to reflect his character through the passing of time. Anon is still recognizably clad in his iconic white robes and hood. His staff design is a blend between a walking stick and a Lady Justicia scale; representing tranquility and justice.
Anon’s new appearance
Staff concept for Anon
This all begs the question: why has Anon returned? All I can tell you for now is that a prophecy is unfolding and that there are mighty trials and tribulations ahead. For more you’ll just have to play the story realms yourself ;)
A new journey awaits…
The art team made so much awesome work for this expansion that it was impossible to show it all in this one dev diary. That is why I’m happy to share that we will be doing an Art Blast when Archon Prophecy releases on August 12th! In the Art Blast members of the art team will compile their favourite works of the expansion and put them up on Artstation. So look out for that in the future!!
It’s been great working on this new content and I hope you enjoy playing with it as much as we did making it!
-A
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