Day two of our Developer Showcase is all about the art of Farlands! Today's update comes from two of the team's concept artists,John Wallin Liberto and RoboGabo. Each artist has taken extra time to discuss the images for additional insight into their vision. We hope you enjoy:

John Wallin Liberto

For the Farlands skybox I wanted to create something beautiful that would show that in virtual reality you could deviate from actual reality. The skybox has volumetric clouds and planets within the atmosphere. The in-game skybox ended up being 3 hand painted images for day, night, and sunset. The sky slowly morphs and changes depending on time of day.An early 3D model of the Giffle Garden needed a paint over, where I could experiment with colors and patterns before it our environment artists made it in 3D. We decided to go with a swirly path around the plants in the garden that leads the eye to them.The Farlands Cockpit was an opportunity to explore alien tech/sci fi: round monitors with a round UI; objects floating such as Ramen and a Rubik’s cube. This was also a space for us to tell the story of a newly graduated student who mistakenly was chosen for the mission of finding sentient life.The Wisple Hive concept shows how Wisples would collect juice from the giant drop. They would suction a drop and carry them to other places in the Hive, and the giant drop would shrink or grow depending on how the amount of Juice remaining. I tried to keep warm honey-like colors, and show paths to other rooms to make the area feel big and reachable.This overview was an early take on what the Jungle could look like. It was hard to make it look lush without using the greens of actual jungles we have on earth, although I think we found a good balance of an alien look without feeling too hostile.The Koleron entrance is based on RoboGabo’s concept of a Koleron opening his mouth as an entrance. I placed the concept in this scene and tried to find a good color combination. We wanted this to feel like an alien vacation.An early idea of the interior of the Koleron cavern. The player would stand in the middle as the creatures perform ritual dances around the platform. A wise older Koleron would be giving orders. We thought it might be a fun idea to add storytelling elements to the environment: in this case some of the sculptures pop out or follow the player with their gaze.Exploration on possible behaviors for the Wibwom character. Besides having a weird appearance we wanted to communicate a sense of function to all of its features. The crest at the top of its head would be used to dig in the ground and battle other Wibwombs. The crest would also collapse with the bottom jaw and create a hard faceplate.The Giffle anatomy resembles a plant and the behavior also reinforces this idea. We had an idea that tiny little spore creatures that would fly out and combine with other spores to create new plants, but then curl up and wither away. Another strange behavior of the Giffle would be to hang around similar looking plants to blend in.The first 20 creature concepts for the game. Only the cotton looking bird made it in, but the magenta/purple panther and the hollow frog were close. I included a silhouette of the player to give a sense of scale. You’ll notice we tried to keep a lot of these designs at eye level so we could have a comfortable experience for the player. A lot of these concepts made it to the next stage of sketches where we imagined possible behaviors and gameplay elements - it was really fun.Second batch of 20 creatures, at this point in the project we were looking for interesting and weird alien forms. From this image, the Koleron and the Wibwom made it to the final lineup. The 3rd creature from left to right almost made it and also the 3 stacked guys. It was a lot of fun to take these images and do sketches of all their different behaviors.Second mood painting. This was done early in the project and it needed to convey the different sizes of creatures, a balance of weirdness and familiarity, as well as an ecosystem. From this image the Oleant came to be.One of the first Farlands images from back in the prototype days when we had the codename Wild Worlds. We ended up making this set of creatures and the environment as a testbed. The green guy would hunt and eat the little blue creatures during the day and at night the little guys would transform into those huge monsters on the left and eat the green creatures.Each day this week, we'll be featuring new updates for Farlands. There's still time to add your questions in for tomorrow's Q&A.Wednesday: The Art of(You are here)Thursday: Q&A with theteam - Ask your questions now!Friday: Oculus GiveawaySaturday: Screenshot Saturday