Hello faithful backers! Bt here - I'm going to talk about the development of a background in Quest For Infamy.
This background is the eastern portion of the Farm fields just outside of the town of Volksville. The crops are all located behind a little fence, just off the main road into Volksville.
This background harks all the way back to just after the Kickstarter, when we brought Jason Lamb aboard the team to serve as a background artist. I had an idea for this area, and so I discussed what I wanted with Jason. I will sometimes make up a very crude sketch, which has become known around these parts as a "Steve Sketch " - which contains the basic details of a background as I see it.
And then, because I was feeling saucy - I did a poorly colored version.
So I gave Jason this (awful) sketch and we conversed about what should be in the scene - I knew it needed Apples on the back end, so we went with that. We decided to have the view (camera angle, if you will) be at 3/4's, so the road would go diagonally across the screen. Lambo took my suggestions, and the sketch and began to work. Soon, he had a basic sketch that looked like this.
He showed me, I approved and told him to continue - so he added some grass textures.
Jeremy Kitchen, our art director, and I looked it over and had him keep working on it. More details emerged.
Jason worked hard on creating some interesting foreground elements, like the cart on a small hill in the extreme foreground. Working with the team, Jason, Jeremy and I got all the elements in place, and Jason finally finished up this piece - and the background was done! He moved on to another screen, and so did we - and we were happy.
Later on down the road, in the development of the game - as the director, I decided that this screen needed a split in the road to lead off down south - and that having the screen on an angle just wouldn't work that way. So I decided we were going to have to edit/re-do this background.
I did a quick job in photoshop to show Jason what I meant.
He took the edit I made, and basically took the background back to the studs, so to speak - and rebuilt it from the ground up.
Each layer and iteration, he added more and more detail, building upon the foundations he laid. He'd share his progress on each level with Jeremy and I.
And finally, the background was completed and this is how it looks, in game, right now.
It's pretty amazing how many iterations this background has had - but it's all been worth it, because Jason has produced a beautiful background for our game. Sometimes, this is how it goes on this project - we'll go back and change something, and have to start all over - but the enthusiasm of the team, and workers like Lambo, are what keep the quality of this project amazing!
I hope you've enjoyed this little look at the development of a background!
Bt
