Hello everyone!
In our first developer diary, we talked about the characters of Crimson Frontier: Youth — how their personalities, stories, and roles in the narrative gradually take shape as visual designs.
In this developer diary, we’re talking about the environments of Crimson Frontier: Youth — how locations are created, how the script is transformed into visual spaces, and how color, lighting, and small everyday details help reveal the world of the game. Evgeniy Khe, Lead Background Concept Artist, told us more about the process.
How many artists are currently working on the backgrounds?
Besides me, there are currently three other artists on the team.
Some of them are my former students, while others are former colleagues or friends. Everyone works on different tasks, while my role is primarily to coordinate the team and set priorities.
How do you create a location that makes players want to stop and explore the details?
First of all, we draw on our own gaming experience and preferences. We love playing games ourselves, and we especially appreciate games where it’s interesting to stop and look closely at the environments.
That’s one of the reasons we enjoy working on Crimson Frontier: Youth so much — there are plenty of details, and every background helps tell the story.
Where does work on a new background begin?
Everything starts with the script. We read it together, discuss it, and identify the scenes that need locations.
After that, we begin working — starting with the first rough sketches and gradually moving toward more detailed and complex development.
What matters most when creating a location: story, atmosphere, or visual appeal?
The question already contains much of the answer.
A location without a story is simply empty. It needs to have its own atmosphere and evoke some kind of emotion. And, of course, it should also be visually appealing.
Different things attract different people — some are drawn to the atmosphere, some to the details, and others to the story itself. That’s why all of these elements work together, and each of them is important.
How do you determine what kind of mood a particular scene should have?
Sometimes we start directly from the script, and sometimes from the personalities of characters we’ve already come to know very well during development.
When those characters meet, their personalities, histories, and emotions collide. That creates a certain dynamic, and that dynamic helps us understand what the scene should feel like — both for the characters and for the player.
Which location in Crimson Frontier: Youth was the most interesting to work on, and which was the most challenging?
The gaming club was probably the most interesting one.
We had to imagine what a gaming club might look like in the year 3301 — more than a thousand years from our own time.
It was a chance to take something familiar and rethink how it could evolve over such a huge span of time while still keeping something recognizable about it.
Are there any environmental details that you especially like and hope players will notice?
Definitely.
The story takes place on another planet, but people have still brought small pieces of ordinary human life with them.
Things like arcade machines, food vending machines, and other everyday objects are still part of this world.
These may seem like small details, but they’re an important part of making the environments feel lived-in, and we pay a lot of attention to them throughout development.
How do you use color and lighting to communicate the mood of a scene?
When a scene is tense or tragic, we may mute the colors — or go in the opposite direction and make the contrast much stronger.
It all depends on the emotional intensity of the scene. The more intense the moment, the richer and stronger the colors and lighting can become.
For quieter or less significant moments, we use lighter colors and softer lighting.
That’s it for this short behind-the-scenes look at the background art of Crimson Frontier: Youth.
In future developer diaries, we’ll continue introducing the people behind the game and showing how scripts, concepts, and ideas gradually turn into the world you’ll eventually see on screen.
See you in the next devlog!
🎨 More work from Evgeniy Khe: