Category «Concept Art»

A picture blog for our new game

As some of you may already know we currently work on a new project, which was named "Morituri" for some time but has now the title Behind Stars and under Hills. Its prototype is co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union and the MDM.

Behind Stars and under Hills will be a Dungeon Adventure with detective elements and animal people. It puts emphasis on story and atmosphere, on interaction with NPCs (dialogues) and exploration. While there probably will be fights (of low complexity), those won't be the main focus of the game. Instead, players have to find hidden ways and items, translate scriptures, talk to the inhabitants, trade with them, circumvent and/or find ways around dangers (like enemies and traps), and use the light by placing torches.

There are no real hard facts to announce yet (hopefully soon though), but we started a picture blog for the project, especially for the prototype we currently work on. You can find it here. We post everything visual, i.e. drawings, scribbles, animations and screenshots from the game and the level editor. Our intention is to link the blog whenever we post those pictures on Twitter or Facebook, so people don't see a single slice of the game only, but can inform themselves more about the look of the game instantly. It also makes it easier to follow the project as long as we don't have a dedicated website.

https://behindstarsandunderhills.tumblr.com

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TRI – preparing cut scenes and new levels

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Now that most of the levels are made (but not yet finished), Jana is preparing foxes for the cutscenes. They will tell the story of friendship and why the monk wants you to go to the "magic world" and use the triangles.

1. Everything starts with a story board

Before Jana began to animate the scenes, she was sketching the plot sequences of the back story. You won't see this story in one go, which means she needed to decide how to cut the backstory into small pieces of mini stories. The way the foxes and the monk are displayed in the pictures will be important for later news articles.
We will not tell you the story now. But maybe you come up with your own interpretation! :D

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2. Fleshing out the foxes

After these fast sketches Jana took every pose of the monk and the foxes and drew them in detail. The dynamic of every pose is very important for later use.

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3. Testing animatics

First she colorized the sketches to test how they would look animated and which parts of the fox, like ears or tails, have to be in separate pieces to be animated. Jana did the animation in 3dsMax, so we don't need to render videos, but use real-time animation instead.

Watch here!

4. The final art style

The final pieces of graphics necessary to animate the characters are done in Illustrator. Jana is using the sketches a basis for the colored cel shading art.

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5. Real time animation

This is how the foxes are animated in the finished style. At the moment we are looking for a voice actor to read the story, so that it will feel like a fable or fairy tale.

Watch here!

6. Leveldesign

Friedrich recently finished one of the last levels. Just have a look at the screenshots (the scene doesn't have an art style yet, so it's all test-textures). Sadly, we are not sure yet when the next update with the new levels will be released. It needs to be tested and polished a bit. Bit hey, it has portals and trees.

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And a very small and quick sneak peek on the last level of TRI. You gain the ability to reflect solid rays there and walk on them:

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(Of course, this is very alpha right now.)

We hope you enjoyed this news article, and don't forget to vote for us on Greenlight. ;-)

The AMAZE-ing update

Hey TRIanglers,

we are preparing for the next updates - a minor one in April, and a huge one with more features, characters and levels in May. So let us show you what we're working on for the next triangulations.

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Running - Yes, we took your wish seriously to be able to run and implemented it into the game. But we also added dexterity, to prevent you from rushing through the game. I think otherwise most players would rush through the levels instead of taking the time to explore all the hidden places we prepared. What do you think?

TRI O.S.T. - Some of you were asking if we are going to have a soundtrack. Yes! Our composer Ludwig is going to create a whole soundtrack for our game and make complete songs from the little snippets you currently hear in TRI. The current trailer song will be included, too.

New Feature - Players that know TRI from its first version will know the upcoming feature - light rays. The April update will have new levels, at least one featuring light rays.

Pricing - This wil be the last update for the convenient price drop of 50% off. In May we definitely raise the price due to the new content.

Why AMAZE-ing? - We are going to participate in the first festival for us this year - the AMAZE INDIE CONNECT. If you are in Berlin, Germany from April the 24th-27th you can meet us there and other Indies like Nicklas Nygren (Knytt), Sos Sosowski (McPixel), Vlambeer (enough said), Jonas Kyratzes (The Sea Claims Everything), Michael Brough (Corrypt), Ed Key (Proteus), C418 (enough said, too), and many more :D

Last but not least - here is a peek on the next character - the mysterious fox.

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