Part 1 — Process
Part 2 — Exploration
Part 3 — Team
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Beneath, a collection of the technical and design exploration.
The first rough storyboard by Anton Eriksson we did based on Chris vision. The vision included three worlds; The City, The Prairie and The Dunes.
– The City
Here we where playing around with some visual ideas on one of the first renderings of the city. The idea was to make a pretty minimalistic graphic solution, with the tech limitations in mind.
Above some form exploration of the city. We know we had to think about the amount of polygons so we needed to keep stuff simple, specially when we didn’t know at this time how much performance “The Soup” would take.
The eyes was something we just played around with. Chris wanted to move in another direction so we took them away.
Below another route where we explored another atmosphere together with painted textures.
We worked with Mirada who developed all the creatures present in the experience.
Check out their nice case study here.
Above another thought that we choose not to go forward with in the City. We had an idea of a mirror world underneath the surface, a more twisted version of the dream world.
Below; technical prototyping of the city environment through WebGL. We called it “code storming” instead of brain storming and was just like creating sketches. In code. An extensive amount of testing was required to get it right. A lot of playing around. It also gave us the opportunity for tweaking the interaction too.
Just click on the links to explore!
Mouse Cubes Test 1
Mouse Cubes Test 2
Mouse Cubes Test 3
Mouse Cubes Test 4
Mouse Cubes Test 5
Mouse Cubes Test 6
– The Prairie
This part was very tricky for us to play with. At this time we was just focusing on form exploration but at the same time the “logical” part of us told us to think about the performance. Yes, WebGL is very powerful but we knew the “soup” from Mirada had lot of amazing animations so even if we painted with brushed we know that this part would be more flat and polygon made later on.
Another direction we tried to see if we could find a more unique style. Keeping the lo-poly but adding more painted textures for a different feeling.
Below, some of the technical exploration. Just click the links to explore!
Black Soup Test 1
Black Soup Test 2
Black Soup Test 3
Prairie Snapshop Progress 1
Prairie Snapshot Progress 2
– The Dunes
Working with the dunes was very exciting and we tried to find way to stick to the surreal aspect of the story, without making it too eerie. The floating city, that was up and down, felt interesting was a thing that added to that mood.
– More information…
You can get more information and explore more of the prototypes on www.ro.me/tech
Also don’t miss:
Part 1 — Process
Part 3 — Team