Hey everyone! 🩵
During our latest Discord Team Stream, the Art Team took the community on a journey through the creative process behind Echoes of Elysium, diving deep into character design and animation. These Team Streams are part of our ongoing effort to share development insights directly with the community, helping bridge the gap between players and our dev team.
Today, we’ll introduce some of the key creatives behind the game’s visuals and highlight key moments from the stream. These talented artists help shape the world, characters, and overall style you will experience in-game, and their creativity plays a huge role in bringing everything to life.
Meet The Team
Ilya - Art Director & Concept Artist
Formerly Lead Concept Artist at Bethesda, Ilya has worked on major titles such as Fallout 4, Fallout 76, Starfield, and The Elder Scrolls, with additional credits including Metroid Prime, Donkey Kong, and Shadow of Mordor.
Roger - Lead Character Artist
With over twenty years in the gaming industry, Roger has contributed to projects such as Guitar Hero and Rock Band, and Call of Duty, and even MCU marketing and character design. He specializes in 3D art and animation.
Karim - Technical Artist & Animator
Bringing twenty-five years of industry experience to the team, Karim’s credits include Fable, Black & White 2, Shadow of Mordor, and Firewall Ultra. Fun fact: He wrote the book on The Art of Rigging.
Visual Cohesion & World Building
Ilya kicked off the stream by diving into character design and how early concepts shaped the world of Elysium. The first piece of concept art was a total game-changer, offering a glimpse of all the different elements in the game coming together in a cohesive style from the architecture to the landscapes to the enemies. What’s amazing is how close this initial vision aligns with what the game looks like today, highlighting the importance of visual cohesion in creating an immersive world and experience.
Character Development
Defining key classes like Warrior, Pilot, and Builder helped capture the spirit of the game laying a foundation to build off of. It gives a fresh avenue to flesh out tier levels for the character. Although it took numerous iterations and a vast amount of characters to reach this point, establishing the archetypes provided a clear creative direction.
Character Creation
Roger walked the community through the process of turning 2D concepts to 3D models, emphasizing how crucial it is to work alongside the concept artist in realizing the vision. Using tools like ZBrush, Maya, and Substance Painter, Roger ensures every character is vibrant and polished, looking the best way possible in 3D. The cel-shading rendering style gives way for a painterly 2D vibe, making characters pop against the world and environment, enhancing the overall depth, contrast, and animation fluidity, as well as making production speeds faster and efficient.
Animation & Movement
Karim then showcased some animated sequences, including combat and crafting table interactions with a focus on natural movement, realistic physics, and fluidity throughout these sequences. By ensuring animated sequences never feel like an obvious loop, Karim’s attention to detail makes the world feel so much more alive and immersive.
Team Insights & Tips
The stream wraps up with the team sharing their design philosophy, favorite development moments, and tips for aspiring artists.
Interested in seeing more? The full stream is ready to watch on our YouTube channel:
Upcoming Team Stream
Our Team Streams are a chance for the community to hang out, ask questions, and share feedback directly to the team! Our next stream will be this Thursday, January 29th at 8 PM ET hosted on our Discord server. Join the community to stay up to date with all Echoes of Elysium news and tune in live. Trust us, you don’t want to miss it! https://discord.gg/loricgames 🩵
Early Access Launch
Echoes of Elysium launches in Early Access this Tuesday, January 27th! Wishlist it, grab your copy at launch, and share with all your friends! Plus, enjoy a 10% launch week discount!
As always, we are so grateful for all the support and love from the community, we wouldn’t be here without you guys! Thank you so much for being part of the Echoes of Elysium journey!
The adventure starts soon, and we can’t wait to have you along!
🧡Team Loric