Greetings Victorians and Happy Thursday!
This will be the first part of the Art of Pivot of Empire showcasing the 2D art made for the Immersion Pack, while part two, focusing on the 3D art, will be released in a couple of weeks. Like the previous Immersion Pack, a brand new interface skin and paper map have been lovingly crafted with a decidedly Indian flavor. Along with the new skins, we have 8 brand new event illustrations and many more icons to support the new features coming in Pivot of Empire. For both the UI reskin and the paper map, the artists have drawn inspiration from traditional Indian architecture, classical Indian paintings, and commonly used colors such as turquoise and saffron. Without further ado, let’s jump straight into the first topic - the new interface skin!
UI Skin
There is so much inspiration to draw from the Indian culture with their rich and extremely long history. Instead of focusing only on one time period exclusively, we take elements from Indian art, architecture and ornaments throughout their entire history (up until 1936 of course) which adds the cultural touch that makes this interface unique. Inspired by the plethora of highly detailed stone carvings and historical monuments from India, we decided to use white stone as a base material for the interface. The ornate and heavier material is also quite different from previous interface skins. To contrast the off-white stone color, we balanced the warm tone with a turquoise fresco look on the headers.
We explored a combination of different materials, frames and colors.
This was a rock solid choice, I must say
There are several key motifs that we use for the interface skin, as well as the paper map (we will talk more about that later): flowery and plant patterns, mandala configurations and animals. Elephants have been a key element in many Indian art throughout history and there has been no better time than now to add elephants into the interface of Victoria 3! Another common animal featured in Indian art is the graceful peacock -we have incorporated these two creatures into the UI panels, combined with the other motifs mentioned. (Try to find out how many elephants are in the UI skin as well as the papermap!)
I think these animals are ‘relephant’ to the theme
Floral and plant patterns surround the elephant and the peacock.
Papermap Skin
The paper map draws inspiration from many of the same sources as the interface skin but with a deeper focus on Indian paintings. Several key elements of Indian paintings are a flat look with limited perspective and a soft, almost watercolor like painting style. Like the papermap from Voice of The People, the illustrations depict key events and slice of life moments in history, but with a focus on India. The art team worked with the Narrative designers to come up with interesting moments on Indian nationalism, the relationship between India and Great Britain and general life in India in the Victorian age. It was truly not an easy task to narrow it down!
[Can you identify these key historical moments?]
A key element is the changing of the languages of text on the paper map UI skin when it makes sense. The last time we did it was in the Voice of The People, where we changed the names of the oceans and seas (and a few other elements) to French. This time is no exception, where we used the Hindi script for the text. There was much discussion between Narrative Design and Art on which Indian language to use. English was a strong contender since it was prominently used in British East India as well as today. Ultimately we settled on Hindi as it is the main language of India today and not using English adds more immersion to the map.
A simple change like this adds so much more immersion to the visuals!
We are also adding mountains and forests in the style of landscape art in classical Indian paintings. A new addition is the illustrations of key cities around the world in the Victorian Age, again, inspired by Indian art. The key cities also have some culture variation on them so you won’t see London represented by an Indian style city!
Cities, mountain ranges and forests dot the landmasses.
Event Illustrations
If you haven’t noticed already, the 2D artists work very closely with the Narrative Designers on many aspects in Victoria 3. The event illustrations are no exception. Once the designers have come up with the theme of an event image as well as provide some references, the concept artist will start researching and finding even more references. He/she will also most likely have more questions for the Narrative designers and this will facilitate the next step, which is to brainstorm and provide thumbnail sketches.
Early sketches to determine the final composition
The Art Director will work together with me to provide feedback and decide on the final composition. In the example above (which is the Indian urban scene) we wanted to have a greater sense of scale since other illustrations are more zoomed in. Other urban scenes that were done previously were also quite up close and personal, showing more of the people on the ground. By taking a more zoomed out approach, we would also be able to show off the urban density and the masses.
Final Indian city illustration with the mood and tone we want to achieve.
As a general rule of thumb, we always try to come up with illustrations that can work for multiple events to increase the visibility of the beautiful new art. Overall themes for the event illustrations include the relationship between the Indians and the British, the cultural divide and tensions amongst the Indian population and the general life in India (rural and urban) during the Victorian age.
What new instructions from the British overlords this time?
Tensions are at an all time high.
A romanticized look at life in India in the 19th century
Icons
With new features comes new icons. (of course existing features will also have new icons such as new laws and new companies) For this section, I would like to show the general process of designing a new icon set for the Acceptance feature coming in 1.8.
There are 5 tiers of Acceptance with (V) being Full Acceptance and (I) as Violent Hostility. With that in mind, here are three general principles for the Acceptance tier icons
[olist]
We explored various icon styles with the intention of adding more flavor to the tiers. For instances where the tier icons are displayed really tiny, we always have the numerical icons with the same color styles as mentioned above.
A more illustrative style perhaps or something a little more graphical
More exploration gave rise to the idea of continuity and consistent story telling between the 5 tier icons. Each icon will be represented by two characters ‘Tophat guy- a straightforward and iconic representation of the ideal citizen who has made it in life in the Victorian era’ and ‘Character 2’ - which changes every tier.
Exploring multiple variants. Truly horrible to have a person caged like an animal in Tier I
For Full Acceptance (V), we can see that ‘Tophat guy’ is shaking hands with ‘Character 2’ which is represented as a typical worker. For Second class citizen (IV) we can see the relationship has sort of soured and ‘Character 2’ is facing away from ‘Tophat guy’ who's giving him a thumbs down. While the ‘thumbs down’ sign can be hard to see, the pose makes the silhouette more distinct. For tiers (III) to (I), we can see a recurring theme and how ‘Tophat guy’ treats ‘Character 2’ worse and worse. In fact, ‘Character 2’ even loses any sense of identity and is just a silhouette of a person with no other distinct features.
[Final tier icons with the simplified variants as well as the Acceptance frame]
Icons were also created for Famines and Harvest conditions which is another new feature. However, no new style was needed and we reference the State trait icons to make the new Harvest conditions icons. Core principles for the Harvest Condition icons include a primary or dominant color and of course, distinct silhouettes!
Famine and Harvest Condition icons
The 2D art team have also created icons for existing features like Laws, Ideologies, new Buildings, new companies and new Achievements (which will be shown in a future Dev Diary.
Just some of the new icons for existing features.
And this wraps up this week’s Dev Diary! I hope you enjoyed the insights into what goes on with the creation of the 2D art for the Pivot of Empire pack! Next week we have Vicka detailing even more exciting narrative content coming for the game!
