Greetings Citizens,

Over the past several weeks we’ve shown you a lot of our ‘look and feel’ planet pieces. We’re happy to put them out because they’re some of the first artwork for the game that we consider “finished.” Today we’d like to step back a moment and show you how that happens. We released new artwork of Prime, the capital of Terra, on Monday… and here’s where it came from!

We initially asked that the artist define the feel of the planet with a landing platform piece. The design team provided the description of Terra. We had the idea of a shining gem of a planet, one that seemed natural and clean but high tech… a world on the grow which was starting to rival Earth itself. The team went back and forth and ultimately settled on this sketch for the mood of future Terra concepts.

This piece itself was the result of a dozen different iterations which changed everything from the number of people visible on the platforms to the height of the buildings. We were ultimately very happy with the art, though, and felt it set a great standard for Terra. Next, we decided we needed a broader “landing” view: what do you see when you’re coming in to land on Prime? The request went out to our artists. We typically request three rough sketches and pick the best for further development.

Associate Producer Adam Poole forwarded this art to the team and we discussed which would best fit our concept for Terra. The team quickly settled on three as feeling best. Chief Visual Officer Chris Olivia then took the sketch and did a paintover indicating the direction he wanted the finished piece to go, adding curves to the background to make the mountains feel more alien.

The artist went to work perfecting the piece and provided us with the revamped version you saw in Monday’s CommLink.

The team loved it! Chris Olivia had several additional suggestions and provided the artist with a marked up version showing what he wanted.

Two days later, the “version 2” piece was available.

Note the new skyscrapers and background details as requested! It’s easy to create a stunning vista but it’s hard to keep at it until it’s exactly right for the needs of our game. Concept art is a very busy back-and-forth until we have something we feel is right to show our community. We’re very happy with the image now and consider it “done”; it’ll go to the level designers and artists who will use it to build in-game assets.