Let’s start this weeks entry with a little exercise. Try to imagine epic sci-fi universes like Star Wars or, for that matter, epic sci-fi games like Galaxy on Fire 2 without space ships! Try again. You see? But inanimate scenarios without vacuum-born transportation and war machines are not the subject of this week’s chapter on concept art. On the contrary, it’s all about space ships! They are the indisputed stars of Galaxy on Fire 2, anyway. Being visible most of the time in-game they also get the biggest part of attention in the game’s forum. That’s why the choice fell on ships readily when pondering over what visual object should featured for the concept art chapter. Fair enough, given that the ships are means of transportation for goods and characters, are weapons in themselves and allow you to show off your status. ”How can I get the Void X?” must be the most frequently asked question in the minds of GOF2 players and our forums respectively. Seeing the importance of the ships for a sci-fi space shooter you might wonder how exactly the act of creation looks like. Well, I did. And here’s what I found. [full]
As for the question ”who did it?”, the answer is easily found at Fishlabs. Art Director Marc Nagel is responsible for the creative process of Fishlabs’ visual assets and I asked him some questions about his work on the ships in Galaxy on Fire 2 – Valkyrie. Marc being the starting point of the creative process I wondered where he starts. First of all “I’m making clear what direction the design shold take and what objectives we are having. For Valkyrie it was especially important, that the new ships would clearly distinguish themselves from those of other factions. We wanted to deliver something all new. That’s why from a design perspective the new ships should be some 20 or 30 years ahead of other ships in the galaxy”, Marc explains. General coolness is a factor, as well. You should feel the strong desire to fly around in one ot those ships. Design should help an object to look great and do much more. It should communicate characteristics beyond words and fulfill a given function. “Anyone seeing the marketing materials such as the teaser should be able able to realize there is something completely new and special about Valkyrie before reading any explanations”.
Once the basic parameters have been laid out inspiration comes into play. For the DEEP SCIENCE ships in Valkyrie Marc turned to the space ships of good old terran NASA for inspiration. “DEEP SCIENCE is a scientific organisation with the mission to explore the vastness of space. The link to NASA is rather obvious”. Specifically, the colour scheme of the DEEP SCIENCE ships is based on that of NASA space shuttles: black, white and tones of grey. The idea to hide the cockpit and leave the pilot without direct sight of his surroundings came from the unmanned drones of the U.S. military. Some inspiration was drawn from japanese scfi-fi animes, “yet only small details such as the characteristic antenna and some hull attributes.”
When it comes down to designing business scribbles and sketches are the starting point of a ship’s way into the game. Once conceptual drawings are digitalized Marc will provide the 3D-artists with a turnaround view of the final design concept. If it is necessary Marc adds notes explaining what functions and details the 3D -artist should pay attention to. “As a rule I’m trying to give the 3D-artists as much freedom as possible” in order to give creativity some air to breath. His own digital work on the concepts he carries out using mostly Photoshop. Although he has often been looking for an alternative already “the variety of functions and possibilites is second to none. Plus, I find new areas of application all the time”. Sometimes he’s using vector programs like Flash to quickly create visual items such as the faction signs you can see on the space stations in Galaxy on Fire 2.
Bottom line? The design of the DEEP SCIENCE ships tells you “they are highly developed, experimental technology with a different take on things than all the other ships out there. You might call them the iPods of space travel, while all other ships are traditional. The DEEP SCIENCE ships are the figurehead of their organisation and its scientific mission.”
After the remarkable success of the Polo and Scirocco R Add Games Volkswagen has once again put us in charge with the realisation of its latest iPhone Racing-Game “Volkswagen Touareg Challenge”. Just in time for the Touareg’s arrival in the global Volkswagen dealerships the Touareg is now available for a free spin on the App Store.
Certainly, some of you have wondered whether we will only be making ad games for the iPhone, since we haven’t announced anything new about our own iPhone games in a long time. The fact is that the development of ad games for the iPhone and iPod is currently a very lucrative business for us. But the best thing about that is that we can use it to finance the costly production of our own iPhone games. That means the better the ad games we develop do, the more we can invest in our own games. So you win either way. Free adv games for quick casual game fun and our top titles that get as much as possible out of the iPhone and offer hours of excitement.[full]
Apple has just announced its most successful non-Christmas quarter ever with incredible 5,2m iPhones and 10.2m iPods sold. Since launch, that’s about 45m iPhones and iPod touches and users have downloaded 1.5b applications from the App Store so far. That’s 33 applications per iPhone or iPod touch user. Congrats to that and we could not be more happy about Apple’s success as we are making close 60% of our revenue with iPhone games so far. However, there were a lot of talks about the new iPhone 3GS and OS 3.0 might drive fragmentation which could be a serious threat to the developer community and the success of the App Store in the long term.
