Dev Blog 5 - Available Here
Hi again! Robin here, This weeks (slightly late but jam packed with content to make up for that) blogpost I thought would be a nice opportunity to introduce you to the major influences the art team are using for the upcoming updated visuals for Glitchspace.
Keeping consistency on any project is going to be a tough job, possibly even more so when the environments you're creating are quite abstract as there are so many little visual rules that need to be put in place so that each of us artists can keep in sync with the others.
So without further ado, may I present to you the Glitchspace Art Rules!
When starting to develop the updated aesthetic we very much wanted to keep to the bold abstract shapes that exist in it's alpha form but add a bit more of a twist to it. We started looking to artists who have already worked with geometry in interesting ways. Here are just a couple of examples of work we fell for and how we plan to incorporate them into our world.
Piet Mondrian
One of the main things we needed to do in Glitchspace was break up the geometry to help add variety and give a better sense of depth to players especially those using the rift. Mondrian, A Dutch painter from the early 1900's has been a huge influence for us when it came to achieving this. His works such as the one pictured below, have given us a set of guidelines we can all easily follow for our basic set of geometry. His mix of composition that is fractured but still maintains order has really spoken to us.
Piet Mondrian - "Tableu I" (1921)
James Turrell
Another major influence for us has been James Turrell, An american based artist who primarily explores the use of light within spaces to stunning results. Just take a look at the examples below and imagine wandering around in them! I especially love how soft he manages to make the harsh geometry feel, hopefully we'll be able to channel a bit of his talent into our own environments.
We are very much a collection of people who like to draw influence from the world around us so when it came to figuring out our overall composition of shape and form it seemed obvious to look at things that currently exist in real space so that we could filter them through our other influences to produce their Glitchspace equivalent
Skyscrapers and Icebergs!
The big key players! Our environments are split into three levels of detail each of which we've visualised using slightly difference sources
The primary and biggest objects for us are defined by Skyscrapers.
Skyscrapers have a lot of qualities that in Glitchspace we can really make use of. They can give the player a sense of scale, draw the eye vertically to help with areas we'd like to give more of a sense of vertigo and have strong silhouettes which can dominate landscapes and lend themselves well to our abstract aesthetic.
Our secondary shapes come from a slightly more organic place, icebergs!
While still able to dominate the scene, we chose icebergs as our go to source for our secondary shapes because of their fractured quality. The idea that in a world with massive objects that can move freely amongst themselves some collisions wouldn't occur just seemed silly. We've also taken inspiration from the shapes that can occur under the water out of view.
The smallest level of detail is also drawing influence from icy waters, and the ice flows that occur when the icebergs collapse and collide.
We like to imagine that these could be a nice way to visualise the smaller bits of data that occur in Glitchspace, assorted bits of discarded data clustering together to become collectively it's own entity.
I have plenty more I could talk about but I really should be getting back to work! I'll leave you with a little taste of how we're doing.
Over and out, Robin