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Developer Showcase - The Art of Farlands

VirtuaJulian
Adventurer
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



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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.

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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.



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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.

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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.


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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.

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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.

RoboGabo
khzmx3rl5rwl.jpgAn 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.


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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.

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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.

Developer Showcase Schedule
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.

Tuesday: Introduction
Wednesday: The Art of Farlands (You are here)
Thursday: Q&A with the Farlands team - Ask your questions now!
Friday: Oculus Giveaway
Saturday: Screenshot Saturday

Big thanks to both John Wallin Liberto and RoboGabo, as well as everyone on the Farlands team who helped contribute to this update!
14 REPLIES 14

Zenbane
MVP
MVP
I love the creature lineup of the early creature concepts. It sorta reminds me of the Tailed-Beasts in Naruto:





Anonymous
Not applicable
These are so awesome! So many good creature designs, i really like the large ones in the first creature image! I hope some of these get added.

Would it possible to get the first concept images in a high res file? I really wanna make them my background images!

VirtuaJulian
Adventurer
Awesome, glad you like them! I'm a fan as well, this is one of my favorite updates from all of our Showcase posts. The art is great and the added commentary makes them very special.

To answer your question, here's the full sized image, I had it sized down so it would be easier to view in the post given the quantity of images :).


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Anonymous
Not applicable
Thanks! Makes a great lockscreen too 😄

matrak76
Honored Guest
hii

Sethusk
Explorer
Very cool concepts!

dekoomer
Protege
I love the Farlands Cockpit cocept art, But it made me ask why did the floating items and that cute bobble head never made it to the game?


sonofbryce
Protege
Nice desktop material! 😉

Gypsy816
Expert Protege
Love this concept art! Pretty unique. 🙂
Oculus Community Manager - kweh!