Dynastica art rant part 1
Hi!
My name is Christopher and among other things, I am the art director of Dynastica. I’m here to rant a little about our new buildings in the city window and my thoughts about it.
Early on we decided to show the buildings of a city much like how it was done in the old Heroes of Might and Magic-games. Therefore we left a big portion of the city screen available for building illustrations. Now we have finally completed the task.
Before going into production we did some serious writing about each building. We had to come up with fitting characteristics that would also make them differ from one another. We also considered positioning. The layout of the city had to make sense and if possible, I wanted to mimic the positioning of buildings to the nodes in the skills graph. Because of the limited space available, we skipped the horizon in the background and went with an overlook view, thus maximizing the area for us to build on.
The idea to have different backgrounds depending on the terrain of the city was in our minds from the start. Besides giving much bang for the buck it would also help players recognize cities from one another. The original idea was to make the background landscapes very generic but our artist Rikard went ahead and did exactly the opposite, creating an interesting terrain with rivers and hills. He didn’t have a hard time to convince me.
Most buildings were nailed from the start, having only minor changes done along the way. One building that did change a lot was one of the most important ones, the upgradeable Village Hall in the center. A very small overall change that had great effect was when we lit most of the windows and doorways, making the city more vivid and alive.
Notice how the river runs. It drives not only the water wheels of the forge and workshop, but it also runs past the garden, well and marketplace - buildings that often need water. Most doors are open, but not the ones leading into the magical buildings on the right. Only a select few are invited into these. Oh, and since we are still working on our religion expansion, I will not show you those buildings on the left just yet. =)
Christopher Smith
of Dynastica
