Letters from Circe's Island: Dev Log #5

Letters From Circe's Island #5: Environmental Visual Development & Stylization

By Isa Wezey

As Aiaia takes place on an island in mythological ancient Greece, we have an abundance of lively inspiration for environment design. In this kind of setting, it’s easy to picture a world that’s both geographically accurate and itching to be explored by the player. Environmental visdev started off with pictures of the Mediterranean coast as we imagined what the beaches of Circe’s island would look like. Using this as our geographical basis, the world had to be lush and colorful to live up to its real life ecosystem. Surrounding the coast, of course, are the rich forests that are home to countless species of flora. As Grace mentioned in our first devlog, we chose flora native to the Mediterranean basin, so both environmental assets and collectible plants will be region accurate. Using our inspiration images and knowledge of the native plants, we went ahead and began ideating different parts of the island. We wanted our setting, while staying accurate to the actual basin, to foster a sense of invitation to explore. I’ve included a few reference images here, as well as a link to our Pinterest board with tons more.

Here is what a few of our early concept pieces looked like:

By Isa (@thewezey)

By Issy (@mysticrakkoon)

By Grace (@ameliorez)

The visual style we chose to render in is heavily inspired by puzzle platform games such as Neva and Spiritfarer, which take place in similar settings. Both of these games do a great job of creating a sense of depth in the scenes, despite the game being 2D. Neva, in particular, uses parallax backgrounds. Parallax is defined as “the apparent shift in the position of an object when it is viewed from different angles”. In this case, it is essentially each layer of the background moving at a different speed. The movement of each separate background element will contribute greatly to the sense of depth in a scene, which is essential for a setting like a forest. Due to this, my rendering style for the backgrounds is also heavily referenced from Neva.  I think that the flat, layered 2D elements is stylistically cohesive with our vision for Aiaia, as it helps to foster a whimsical image. 

Our forest background, WIP. By Isa (@thewezey)

Screenshot reference from Neva

While getting into smaller details, such as specific environmental assets and their collectibles, we had to land on a cohesive rendering style for all of them. This way, not only is it visually cohesive, but rendering time is faster. For our current scope, Grace made a style guide that consists of outlines and flat colors. We also are using the same outlining pen in Clip Studio Paint. Alongside the general style guide, Grace also provided a plant guide. This is extremely helpful, as it helps us stay consistent while drawing the different flora. Below is also an example of a finished asset in our chosen style.

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