As a producer, I design visually. Because of this, I have to be surrounded by the artwork that the Art Department cranks out. It’s not enough for me to say “Beatrice does this” or “Paranoia says that”…

I have to be able to put faces to names. But more importantly…I have to be able to visualize the scenes and quests and game in my head. When Dave writes story related material, I need to be able to put the parties involved into the situation that’s been written. Believe it or not, I started with just a bunch of inspirational pieces I found here and there. I put these into our development wiki, and used them to start building my internal visual reference of how things were going work. What it would look like.

As original art was produced, I would replace the inspirational image, with our original. That’s when things really take off on some levels. It’s a form of Quality Control in some ways: If I can see the picture in my mind, and it works perfectly…I know we are on the right track. But, back to visual design…my office walls are filled artwork progressions. Awhile back, I posted about my walls.

Well, a couple weeks ago, we made a big push to finish the basic concepts of the needed artwork for the alpha/beta. Having finished that, we are painting them up. You saw an example of this yesterday, with Thrynity. What you do not typically see is the design process in motion. Last time readers here saw my wall, it was full…

The back wall holds Sprite progressions...

These days, it’s really full. And it’s getting fuller with each passing day. We are getting one to two Sprites painted a day. Once all the major NPC’s are painted, we will begin drilling these into models, and then: the final animated gamesprites.

But even in this format, they are quite useful to me, and the writing director. Even in this format, it allows us to dream up the world of Emerald Kingdom, visually…and let’s imagine scenarios and events. Without accurate and quality artwork, Emerald Kingdom cannot come alive in my mind.  If I cant see it, then neither will you.

The side wall has various stuffs. Note though, our UI reference shots from other games.

Items, beasts and miscellanea, as well as player clothes, player models and hairstyles are just as important. We have not forgotten about those. Nor have we forgotten to reference the works of others. Thing is, there is no reason in the world to re-invent the wheel when it comes to things like basic UI design. At the same time, we have buildings and specialized objects in the design queue. We also have beasts, monsters…everything you could need or want in an MMO.

So, while we may be quiet here on the blog and elsewhere from time to time. Remember these walls. My walls change every day. As they change, the game gets an inch closer to reality, and all of us here at Double Cluepon feel another pinch of happy as we get closer to our goal.