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Marvellous. Thanks for sharing these WIPs and sketches

Marvellous. Thanks for sharing these WIPs and sketches

Agreed, it's great to see the original sketches and the thought process behind the design. Thanks for taking the time to write this up and share the images!

 

..Al

Wow, my roughs are super rough, aren't they? For the record, since I know Nathan "gets it" I typically do a really quick sketch in Photoshop with a Wacom pen for my roughs. I don't spend a lot of time on them, just enough to get him to understand. I feel the need to clarify that since they always look like poo next to your finely crafted hand drawn sketches.

 

Do you still have the alternate view of Squishemopolis? It was a lot of fun building that city and it occurred to me that even though we only needed a single angle for the manual & label, since it was all 3D we could visit any part of the city we wanted. So I did a few quick renders of some of the areas within the city.

 

This project seemed tailor made to our strengths. I love putting time into detailed environments and backgrounds that allow the viewer to really get a sense of the place and feel like they're there. And Nathan's cartooning skills are a great way to populate those places and help give them a personality.

 

In hindsight I wonder if the whole limited, muted color palette was a good idea. In theory it was meant to correlate to the old-fashioned photos and mood conveyed by those photos. But in practice it just comes across as a bit foggy and dull, especially when stacked up against all the other manuals as seen in that photo Albert posted. Live and learn. It was still a blast working on that city.

Great!

Wow, my roughs are super rough, aren't they? For the record, since I know Nathan "gets it" I typically do a really quick sketch in Photoshop with a Wacom pen for my roughs. I don't spend a lot of time on them, just enough to get him to understand. I feel the need to clarify that since they always look like poo next to your finely crafted hand drawn sketches.

For those unaware, I should point out that you have some really amazing art up at your website, in addition to the work you've done for AtariAge. You're absolutely right though, that it doesn't take much to get an idea across if it's clearly conveyed, so there's not much point in laboring over something like that. We're both aware it's merely one step in the entire process.

 

Do you still have the alternate view of Squishemopolis? It was a lot of fun building that city and it occurred to me that even though we only needed a single angle for the manual & label, since it was all 3D we could visit any part of the city we wanted. So I did a few quick renders of some of the areas within the city.

Of course! I never throw anything away.

 

Here's an early look at the city, I think this is mostly plug-in generated at this point:

 

A WIP version of the custom-built city:

 

Some close-ups:

 

 

 

 

And one with a little embellishment, that I like to call "Game Over":

 

In hindsight I wonder if the whole limited, muted color palette was a good idea. In theory it was meant to correlate to the old-fashioned photos and mood conveyed by those photos. But in practice it just comes across as a bit foggy and dull, especially when stacked up against all the other manuals as seen in that photo Albert posted. Live and learn. It was still a blast working on that city.

Yeah, it's one of those "it seemed like a good idea at the time" things. I still think it turned out great, but it could have been more vivid.

Thanks for sharing those alternate views!

 

And one with a little embellishment, that I like to call "Game Over"

I still think it turned out great, but it could have been more vivid.

 

I like the muted-colors concept, but the piece feels like the foreground is just plopped onto a stock background. I'm not sure whether it's because of the coloring, or the total values, or the shapes. Perhaps there could be a twisty-curvy building or two in the background as well?

Very nice, guys!

 

The AA landing pad is a nice touch.

Thanks! For some reason, Al keeps wanting the AA logo included , so I've been trying to find more interesting ways of incorporating it. I got the idea from some things Dave Exton did on the back covers of his manuals.

I also like the muted colors concept, and I really like the colorful foreground graphics sticking out.

 

Maybe the background could get some sepia tone to look even more old fashioned?

Maybe the background could get some sepia tone to look even more old fashioned?

Um, aren't the manuals and labels already printed?

Um, aren't the manuals and labels already printed?

 

Yep. It's a done deal. And for the record some of the ideas mentioned above are good and ideas Nathan and I had during the construction of Squishemopolis. It kinda boiled down to a time thing in the end. We knew we could endlessly tweak things but we'd probably still be designing it. And the decision to make the curvy beams was a last minute one to address the feeling of height and danger as mentioned above. The straight beams just didn't seem dangerous enough, especially when you cropped in on just the label. But to make the rest of the background curvy to match our new beams would have meant going back to redo the weeks of work that had already gone into the background. And there just wasn't that kind of time. Sure there are some deformers, filters and other tricks we could have used on the image to try and force a match, they just didn't seem to look right in the end though. One of those hindsight is 20/20 situations.

 

Besides, if I had the time I'd probably still be adding more detail to that city. At one point I even toyed with the idea of adding designs to the t-shirts hanging from the laundry lines on the buildings.

Yep - Dave hit the nail on the head.

 

The thing about artwork, is that at some point you just have to call it "done". But you always learn something that can be applied to another project later. I suppose that's what keeps me coming back to it. If I stopped learning and improving, I'd probably get bored.

 

In that regard, it's probably a lot like programming.

What blew my mind was that you built an entire city for that label...that's just incredible. I was just glancing at the pictures first (before reading the captions) and I had just assumed it was an actual picture of a city. Anyway, nice work guys and thanks for sharing your process.

Here's an early look at the city, I think this is mostly plug-in generated at this point:

 

I wonder if there is a plugin that can import Sim Cities?