We've
got an update directly from Sophie, who works as an artist on OFF
GRID. She is fairly new to the team, but she's been doing a stellar
job! We hope you enjoy:
- -
Hi! Soph here!
I’m
here to keep the art side of things rolling on smoothly. Which mostly
means asset creation, like props, but also set dressing.
Modular Props
Let's
talk modular: doing things this way allows you to have just a few
meshes that you can make a lot of things out of. For the Apostle level,
I made a couple pieces of modular furniture to speed up asset creation.
Think
of it like an Ikea range where you could buy a desk, drawers,
cupboards, etc. that all fit together physically and look like part of a
family. Some of the pieces in that range will share exact parts, and
some will have unique ones. This is the basics of modular building.
Modular desk components.
With these six pieces I can make six variations of desks. Going
beyond these, you could make a broken desk with only three legs that is
being propped up with other assets, or you could scale the length of the
straight desk-top as much as fits the space you want (since the
textures are vertex-painted faces there’s no distortion).
Modular sofa components that can be put together in endless ways
Different from these desks, this four-piece sofa set is mostly
one-off models (they all share the same feet). Yet when placed in the
scene, there is no real end to the possibilities you can make with it.
Make a snaking three mile long sofa if you so wish!
The modular sofas creating a comfy space in the Apostle level
Set Dressing
Set dressing is pretty straight forward as a
concept. You’re placing things around the world to make it feel like a
more real lived-in environment. It’s a little more than just throwing
assets around the place (although that’s a lot of it), you need to think
about each environment differently.
In the run up to the
Kickstarter, I spent a lot of time in the Apostle offices discussing
with the team what the general feel of the place is, and then looking
room to room talking about what happens in these rooms in a gameplay
sense.
The Apostle is being closed. There are boxes everywhere as
stuff is being packed away to go elsewhere. These boxes are great for
the stealth aspect of the game, but also tell the story of what is
actually going on. Most of the larger offices are quite sparse, having
already been packed up, but a few offices are still very much in use.
Set
dressing has to work alongside the game in making the environments look
more interesting but not distract from what the player needs to do.
This means I can’t place new hackable devices around the place and not
block the player’s path. But what I can do is direct the player to
places of interest.
Set dressing is cleverly used to direct attention to this office in the Apostle level.
For instance, most of the offices don’t have much in them that the
player needs to notice, these are kept very sparse and all packed up.
But there is a particular journalist's office that is a key place in the
Apostle level, and it’s one of the few offices that’s still in use.
There’s things scattered around the desk, a coat that’s been left on a
hanger, a board with all the bits of information that the journalist has
been working with.
Fun with set dressing - a DIY standing desk.
There were a few other places less important to the player that I was
able to just have fun with. Such as this office where it’s being packed
away. A friend of mine wanted a standing desk but her work wouldn’t
give her one so she stacked things up to make her own one. I made a
little desk in honour of her here. I bet it really annoys the person on
the opposite desk!
A secret corner for slacking off!
Here the occupants of this office have used the fact the office is
moving as an excuse to move furniture around and create them a secret
coffee corner for slacking off.
Hope you've enjoyed!
Help OFF GRID succeed!
We have just 10 days to go with the campaign and need to raise another £4,318 in order to meet our goal. Please help us!
Share the campaign with others: if each of you shared just once, the
campaign would be shared to thousands of others. We need this exposure!
THANK YOU!
The Off Grid Team
p.s. Did you read the last update?! BIG NEWS coming Tuesday!
If you haven’t already - be sure to wishlist Off Grid on Steam - each wishlist makes a big difference to us, and we really appreciate your support!
A lot of this month has been spent working on things we are under NDA over so can’t mention too fully yet.. but the time will come… and there is plenty of other interesting happenings to talk about.
