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My Concepts/Ideas This is my list of various concepts and ideas that I have recently thought of, hopefully inspiring anyone reading to also come up with new concepts or even variations of these ones, which I would very much like to see. Hopefully seeing in the future one or some of these insects being considered by the Obsidian Team, though I do believe some insects that I will be adding onto the list are already in the Obsidian Teams list of bugs to implement. Overtime I will add additional concepts onto my list, each one with an image to go along with it. But for now I hope you enjoy what is currently here and perhaps use it to inspire yourself with new ideas for Grounded. (Also I realise that not all of the images are very accurate to being within the game, but they are just concepts and drawn by hand so I apologise for any errors I made in my pictures. (especially the ones with webs in them) The Devil's Coach Horse Beetle Names: Devil's Coach-Horse Beetle (Longer name) Rove Beetle (Shorter name) Night Terror (Nickname for Boss like 'Mother Demon') Type: Boss Tier: Level 4 and Above Attitude: Aggressive Location: Inside of Giant Log Underneath Stone Slab Within a Compost Heap Spawn Condition: Night Time Only boss spawn, would require boss item to initiate boss fight. Far away from staring area, all bosses should be located away from new or low-tier players. If not then very well hidden or unlocked after completing certain chips or in-game story events. Locations: Inside of Giant Log, the giant log could act as a spawn location for the new boss the 'Night Terror' it would be a largely expansive hollow log filled with resources and mainly various insects that prefer moist environments like larvae, grubs and even various spiders. It could also be home to some new insects yet to be made and various materials like moss and mushrooms. During the Night though, this area will act as the boss arena for the Night Terror aka the Devil's Coach-Horse. Underneath Stone Slab, the stone slab could be one of many slabs located on the stone wall side of the garden, having one particular slab contain a burrow which will lead to a expansive air pocket underneath the slab which would act as the Night Terror's den, being full of stone, quartz, various grub like insects and perhaps some new materials too. Within a Compost Heap, this compost heap could be a new location found in one of the corners of the garden, being full of high tier resources and insects purposefully placed far from new and low tier players to prevent them from encountering the tougher insects too soon. The Night Terror boss would be located at the deepest part of the compost. The compost would be full of all kinds of insects, many resources, mainly being rotting organic matter. The Boss Room of the Night Terror would be very large and upon entering its purpose is instantly recognised due to the graveyard of insect pieces. Although the boss itself will require a specific item to summon or lure out of hibernation. Abilities: The Devil's Coach-Horse itself is filled to the brim with weapons, other than being a complete beast and resembling the appearance of a black soldier ant who drank every smoothie in the game. It is also widely viewed as one of the most savage insects commonly found in most global gardens. Being about 20-32mm in size (real-life) and the adverage wolf spider being 10-35mm (real-life), helps provide the kind of size and strength this thing can handle. Its main diet revolves mainly around a range of invertebrates, including worms, slugs, moths, spiders and woodlice (rollypollys). During its attack you can also tell from its scorpion like posture that it is enraged, but I think the red glowing eyes is a bit of a give away. This insect was built to fight. First of all, its armour is pratically impenetrable. This could make for quite an interesting AI, forcing the player to either knock over the insect by perfect blocking one of its charged attacks to give the player a limited amount of time to inflict some damage before it flips back up the right way. Or any kind of punctering or stabbing weapon could also deal damage through its armour causing players to prepare for this boss fight ahead of time. Another way would be just an excuse to make this insect have an insane amount of health. It also has two massive pincer-like mandibles which considering can cause pain to normal sized human beings may cause quite a high amount of damage to someone the size they are in Grounded, but of course blocking will help prevent these powerful bites. I would also recommend wearing full tier 3 or above armour that has also been upgraded by quite a moderate amount, that way you can be sure that you wont die in the first 3 hits. The insect itself is also a close relative to bombardier and that similarity can be seen through the pair of white glands located at the end of its abdomen, these glands produce a foul-smelling odour or to someone about 14mm in size would be like breathing toxic gas. They are also equipped with a pair of wings, though very rarely used could allow the Night Terror to get to players too far away from it (though this should not occur if placed within a boss arena) or could play as a second stage to the boss fight itself. They are also incredibly fast and can catch up to the adverage player similar to how a wolf spider can, but they cannot jump and instead must use their surroundings to find another way up, this could be used in the boss arena itself making paths for players to run away temporarily as the Night Terror runs up the longer pathways to get to where you are going, but without allowing the players to cheese the insect in battle. Drops and Items: Its drops would be basic in nature, closely resembling a mixture of bombardier and ant parts. Night Terror Part Night Terror Mandibles Night Terror Glands The parts could be used in an assortment of different ways. Night Terror Armour - Could Include 'Night Terror Visor', allowing wearing to have slight night-vision on equip, this is due to the Night Terror's nocturnal characteristics and its night-vision-like sight. The rest of the pieces are optional but full sets are always better in my opinion and could be based souley around night time exploration or purely defensive, especially against toxins. New Weapon and Shield - Could include a Night Terror Sword (one-handed) and a Night Terror Shield, the shield being able to negate 50% of incoming damage and the sword being both one handed, fast and very damaging mixed with a new effect called Terror Toxin which acts like a more potent poison effect. Night Terror Glands could be used for various objects or even structures such as: New building piece for warding away faciton-reactivity attacks and allow players to protect their most important bases, of course wearing out after about 1-3 uses and also costing very expensive materials, this prevents attacks due to the foul odour it produces which most insects even spiders are disgusted of. A new grenade type weapon used to cause massive toxic gas, filled with Terror Toxin which deals increasing damage to all organic insects. (except weevils and infected insects) Could even be used a new type of upgrade which can be added to high tier weaponary adding the Terror Toxin effect to the weapon similar to that of the Night Terror Sword. This would require a fully upgraded weapon before hand. (which would most likely be required to defeat the Night Terror anyway) Additional Information: I'm aware that the Devil's Coach-Horse Beetle and Rove Beetle are not the same insect but in context of the game they would be very similar which is why I have listed them together as this one boss, personally it should be based mainly one the Devil's Coach-Horse Beetle as they are larger and more vicious in nature. But they are similar enough to be tweaked slightly and be almost the same in most other attributes except some minor appearance differences.

Update by Brandon Adler, Literal Task Master Welcome to my world... As a producer, one of my jobs is creating and understanding the game's master schedule. It's a never-ending task that requires constant refinement and adjustment. Anything that is added or changed can cause a cascade of unintended consequences which is why as game developers we have a responsibility to vet everything that goes into the game. Today I'd like to give you a glimpse into how we approach game development from a scheduling perspective and what our typical thought processes are when figuring this stuff out. You will be able to see how each part of our area creation fits into the schedule and why changes and modifications can lead to difficult decisions for the team. Hopefully, it will give a bit more insight into the tough decisions that we make each day when crafting Project Eternity. The Schedule One thing to remember is that when we are in the middle of production the schedule has already been created for just about everything in the game. What I mean by this is that we have identified all of the major tasks that will need to be accomplished and allotted time and resources in our budgets to match those tasks. Depending on the team's familiarity with the type of game we are creating, this can mean anywhere from a tiny bit of guesswork to larger amounts of... estimation. With Eternity we are very familiar with what it takes to make an isometric, Western RPG with branching dialogues and reactivity. It's Obsidian's bread and butter. Because of this our initial estimates are good approximations. Since most of our features and assets are budgeted at the start of the project, any changes to those items have to be accounted for in the schedule. This can mean a few different things - anything from reducing time spent on other tasks, to changing previously scheduled items, to outright cuts - and when changes need to happen project leads consult with each other to try and figure out the best option. Keep this in mind when I start talking about changes to features and assets later on in this update. One Small Interior Dungeon Alright, let's stop talking in generalities and get into the meat of what it takes to create a first pass area in Eternity. I'll discuss a generic small interior dungeon area. This area will have the following characteristics and constraints: Uses an existing "tileset." We don't have tiles in Eternity, but we do have sets of areas that share similar assets. Will have one unique visual feature in the area. This visual feature is something that will make the area stand out a bit. It doesn't have to be incorporated into the design, but we may want to do that to get the most bang for the buck. An Average complexity quest uses this area. "Average" is a flavor of quest in Project Eternity. It refers to the overall complexity of the quest. Quest complexity is determined by the amount of dialogue, branching, and steps a quest has. This is a 3x3 interior. A 3x3 interior is the equivalent of a 5760x3240 render. An easier way to think about it is that a 3x3 area is nine 1920x1080 screens worth of content. You can imagine that making an area even a tiny bit larger can actually lead to enormous amounts of work. As an example, a 3x3 is nine screens of work, where a 4x4 is 16 screens of work... almost double the number of screens. To create our small interior dungeon area, the following has to occur: An area designer (Bobby Null, for example) puts together a paper design for the area. This is usually part of a larger paper design, but for this purpose we can say that it is a separate element. For a small area like this, a paper design wouldn't take more than a quarter of a day. Material concepts for a high wealth interior. After the paper design is constructed, it is passed to the area design team for revisions and approval. For the most part, this goes fairly quickly and normally wouldn't take more than a quarter of a day for a small area. A concept artist (Hi, Polina and Kaz) creates a concept for the unique visual element of this area. Let's say for our purposes the unique element is a cool adra pillar that is holding up a portion of the ceiling. This takes half a day to a day, depending on prop complexity. This may seem like a luxury, but making sure that the areas feel cohesive can save lots of revision time down the road. After the concept work is completed, it is reviewed by the Art Director (Rob Nesler) and the Project Director (Josh Sawyer). Any necessary changes are then made before being approved. Overall, it probably takes about a quarter of a day for review and any revisions that need to be done. An initial pass on a blockout before it has had a review. After the paper design and concepts, an area designer creates a 3D blockout of the area in Unity. This allows the designer to walk through the area and make sure it flows well. This also helps to give the environment artist assigned to the area an idea of where the various elements should be laid out. A full blockout of a 3x3 area normally wouldn't take more than half a day. This is an extremely important part of the process. Sometimes an area seems great on paper, but in practice it is clunky or frustrating. Once the blockout is finished it's passed along to the area strike team for review. The area strike team includes people from most disciplines. This is the point where revisions are performed and the layout becomes finalized. The changes can be as simple as moving some props around or as complicated as redesigning major portions of the layout. Again, for a small area of this size, we aren't looking at more than half a day for all of the feedback and revisions. With the blockout in place, the area can move to environment art (For example, Hector "Discoteca" Espinoza) for the art pass. This includes putting together existing pieces and creating new assets to make the area. A large portion of time allotted to an area is spent in environment art. A 3x3 area that uses mostly existing assets would typically get three days of environment art work, but, because we want to have a cool, unique piece in the area we will add about a day of environment art time. This gives a total of four days for the initial art pass. Like the blockout, the art pass is usually reviewed by the area strike team. Revisions can vary wildly depending on how everyone feels about the area, but it isn't uncommon for another quarter to half a day to be spent on review and revisions for this size of area. The blockout above with revisions, 2D render, and initial design. Now with the 2D render in place, the area is ready for the real design work to be done. An area designer will typically get about three days to do the first pass on the area. This includes things like a loot pass, encounters, trigger setup, temp dialogs, etc.. Because this area has a quest that is running through it, though, it will get an extra day to work out all of those kinks. That puts us at four days for an initial design pass on the area. Remember the part about this area having a quest? Well, now is when a creative designer (Like Mr. Eric Fenstermaker, for example) comes through to write the dialogs. To be completely honest, this usually comes much later, but it works for our purposes. The narrative designer creates the NPC dialogs, quest dialogs, and companion interjections for the area. Usually an area designer will stub these conversations out and the narrative designer will come in and complete them. Depending on the amount of dialog this should take around a day or two for everything. Finally, a concept artist will take a pass at painting over the final 2D render. This pass is used for "dirtying up" an area and adding in the little details that might be difficult for an environment artist to create. As an example, we can cover up texture seems, add in variation on repeating textures, paint in lighting highlights, and even add things like patina or moss on objects. Due to Photoshop magic from Kaz, we can even propagate those changes into our diffuse maps so they show properly in any dynamic lights. This is a fairly low cost procedure and Kaz can cover a small area like this in about half a day. There are other considerations (Like animation, sound effects and visual effects, for example), but we will stop for now. So, for those keeping count at home, to get a first pass area that is borderline Alpha (as in no bug fixing or polish work) it costs the project about 13 man days. This is little over one half of a man month of time for a small, simple area. Larger areas with more content take significantly longer to develop. Our time estimations used for scheduling are determined in preproduction (prepro) phase. Our vertical slice (the end of prepro) is the culmination of the team identifying what it will take to make the game and then actually doing it. We get these numbers by seeing how long it takes the team to perform those tasks in our prepro, and then we can extrapolate those numbers over the course of the time we have budgeted to understand how much work can get done. Tough Choices A milestone will have 15 to 20 areas of varying complexity going at a time. A minor change in an area can cause a domino effect that starts schedule slippage. Remember that on a small team like Project Eternity we have a limited number of people that can work on any one part of the game so taking someone off of their current task to work on changes can gum up our pipelines and prevent others from completing their tasks. We can get around that by switching up the tasking, but it can quickly get out of hand and lead to inefficiencies. That being said it's the team's responsibility to give our backers what they have paid for. If we are playing though part of the game and something feels off from what we promised to our fans, we need to seriously consider making changes - even if it pushes us off schedule. There have been times where an update leads to some serious discussion on the forums and within the team about a direction change. Ultimately all of that gets added into the equation as well. Taking that into consideration, the team has to make difficult choices every day. Do we go through and do another prop pass on a level? What does that cost us in the long run? Will we lose an entire area in the game? These are questions that the leads struggle with everyday. We are always weighing the cost of assets and features against everything that still needs to get done. Luckily, like I mentioned above, we have a bunch of smart, talented, experienced people working on Eternity. The pitfalls we have experienced in previous games give us a leg up when we are trying to navigate this project's development. I wanted to send out this update to give the fans a little insight into our daily processes and demystify what probably seem like arcane decisions. If you enjoy these types of updates, let me know in the forums and I will try to write more of them for you.

Update by Brandon Adler, Producer Hey, everyone. We decided against releasing the Backer Portal right before the holiday break. We wanted to make sure that we had a full staff on board to solve any technical issues that might arise on the site during its launch. We are just as excited as you are for the Backer Portal and we want to make sure it has a smooth release. To keep you sated in Project Eternity goodness we decided to show off some of the artwork we have been putting together this milestone. We are pretty proud of it. Hope you enjoy. Areas Last week on the forums Sensuki, Tagomika, and coffeetable brought up questions about areas we were outsourcing. I figured it would be better to show you the areas instead of talking about them. Take a look. A shrine to the god of the hunt. A drake skeleton amid thick overgrowth. Both of these images come from the same wilderness area. While this area appears thick with foliage now, it was previously the site to horrific fires caused by drakes. Large swaths of ground were burned and only now has the land started to recover. Concepts Kaz and Polina have been hard at work getting concepts prepared for our current milestone and the next. Polina has been focusing on creating the look and feel for our next big city - Twin Elms. Twin Elms is a unique mixture of ruined architecture from an ancient civilization with a layer of Viking-inspired Glanfathan buildings built into it. Glanfathan buildings built into ancient ruins. Line work for environments in Twin Elms. While Polina has been helping to plan the future, Kaz is firmly entrenched in our mega dungeon, The Endless Paths of Od Nua. Take a look at some of the prop work that Kaz is doing for one of the Engwithan-inspired areas. Engwithan props for use in Od Nua. Creatures One of the creatures that has gone in recently is the troll. You can see a few of them in the area below. A group of trolls in-game. That's it for this week, folks. Have a great Thanksgiving.

Update by Rose Gomez, Jr. Producer Hello everyone! My name is Rose Gomez - I'm the newest Producer on Pillars of Eternity. I'll be handling a lot of the Kickstarter related duties for the game from here on out. I've been working at Obsidian Entertainment for a little over three years now. My previous titles include South Park: The Stick of Truth and the Fallout: New Vegas DLCs. I'm thrilled to be able to work on Pillars of Eternity and can't wait to interact more with all of you in the coming months. For this update, we've got some awesome new character, area, and concept art that we're excited to show. However, before we get to the art, we wanted to officially update everyone that we are looking good to release Eternity by Winter 2014. So, look forward to getting your hands on Pillars of Eternity later this year. Our next update will be all about Pillars of Eternity lore by Eric Fenstermaker. Stretch Goals After much discussion and consideration of the poll on our forums we have decided not to pursue any additional stretch goals. Rest assured that the team is working hard on completing the game and including our current stretch goals. Surveys Our designers are working hard to implement the designs that our higher tiered backers have come up with. If you have a survey that needs to be filled out, please do so by March 31st. It's important that you get your surveys completed by the deadline because we are closing in on Alpha quickly. The team needs ample time to get your content into the game. We can't guarantee your in-game contribution will make it into the game if you are late. This includes inn/tavern designs, adventurer party designs, portraits, NPCs, and items/weapons, so make sure you get your idea in before the deadline! You can fill out your surveys on our Backer Portal after you've finished managing your pledge. They can be found on your account page under the Surveys tab. Worried that your design won't fit into Pillars of Eternity lore? Not sure if you want that innkeeper to be an Orlan or an Aumaua? Take a peek at the Pillars of Eternity Wiki to get some inspiration or clarification on the world. Characters With all that news out of the way, let's get to the art. To kick things off this week, we'd like to show you all some of the awesome new Godlike variants Dimitri has finished up - the Death Godlike. As we've mentioned before in previous updates, the Godlike are people that were "blessed" before birth by one or more of the deities of the world. Godlike manifest their divine heritage in a variety of ways, and in the case of the Death Godlike that heritage can be seen through their wicked looking horns and the misting darkness that shrouds their visage. Death Godlike. Another type, the Earth Godlike, can be seen below in some new portrait variants that Polina whipped up. These are just a few of the combinations that will be available to use for your character during the game. Earth Godlike portrait variants. Areas The environment artists are flying through their various scenes and churning out awesome looking pieces week by week. Below you can see a cool new interior from a Blacksmith's shop by Holly Prado. Blacksmith interior. Up next we have a really awesome piece by April Giron from an area called Ondra's Gift. This area is still a work in progress but we thought you all would enjoy taking a look at what we've got so far. Ondra's Gift interior. Both of these areas have a lot of cool detail in them so make sure you view them at full resolution. Creatures In Pillars of Eternity, Druid characters will be able to shift into a few different spirit forms. Druids start with specific spirit forms and can find additional spirit forms in the world. One of these forms is the Cat, shown here in a concept drawing by Polina. Druid Cat Form concept. Below you can see what the Cat form looks like when modeled and textured, rendered out of our engine. Druid Cat form in engine. That's all for this week. Don't forget! If you need to fill out a survey for any Pillars of Eternity pledges please do so on our Backer Portal by the March 31st deadline. In the meantime, keep managing those pledges and commenting on our forums.

Update by Rob Nesler, Art Director and Brandon Adler, Producer We showed you this concept that Polina Hristova had developed, back in Update #55: And here is the in-game level--about to get violent--as developed by environment artist Sean Dunny: We think it looks pretty good. Thoughts? -R Arcanum Playthrough This week, we have the second part of Avellone's two hour playthrough. Chris explores the Shrouded Hills Mines and dies to bandits along the road... multiple times. Obsidian Jobs Obsidian is putting the call out to enthusiastic game developers who are interested in working on Project Eternity. To be eligible, you must be in the Southern California area willing to make the daily trek to Irvine, California. If you or anyone you know fits the description and would be interested in joining the Project Eternity team, follow the links below. QA Lead The Lead QA Tester position requires managing a team of testers, delegating testing tasks, tracking tester performance, providing guidance as well as coordinating with department leads and owners to ensure all aspects of the project are bug free. The Lead QA Tester position requires a strong knowledge of QA methodologies and practices, as well as an ability to handle and act upon high volumes of information and responsibilities. Contract VFX Artist Obsidian Entertainment is looking for a talented self-motivated VFX Artist to create a range of 3D effects and animations for a 3D world. This artist will be responsible for creating both ambient effects (such as smoke, fire, and lightning) and more detailed prop animation (a tree limb breaking, a glass shattering, etc.). These effects will be created using Maya, but experience with comparable programs is acceptable. Stop by our forums and let us know what you think. See you in a couple of weeks.

Update by Kazunori Aruga, Concept Artist, and Brandon Adler, you-know-what-I-do Hello, backers. This week we are profiling another talented Concept Artist on Eternity, Kaz Aruga. While Kaz wears many artist hats his largest contributions are area and UI concepts. Enjoy. Q: Hello, Kaz. What is your job on the Project Eternity team? Before I start I want to quickly thank all you awesome peeps who backed our game. I wouldn't be here working on my dream project if it weren't for you all, so thank you for making this a reality! I have two responsibilities on Project Eternity. The first is supplying the asset and environment teams with concept art. The second is producing art for the game's UI. I'm occasionally tasked with scripted interaction art and will start producing character portraits further down the road. Q: What are you working on this week? I've been tasked with inventory and character creation UI. *leaps away as a massive fireball of community UI rage engulfs the land* But seriously, I appreciated the feedback you all gave us for the action bar and conversation UI. I've taken notes and been implementing ideas that are in alignment with our design goals. As a side note, being a fan of the IE games and having a lot of experience playing them has proven very useful as it helps me identify what worked and what didn’t. I'm sure we all have fond memories of shuffling piles of arrows between characters. Q: What is your typical work day like on Project Eternity? My day usually starts by fighting off Robs and Polinas to get to the Keurig coffee machine in our room. Consuming the glorious bean drink allows me access to all two neurons in my head, which I then rub together as hard as I can to start making artwork. My day varies a lot from this point based on the task I'm on. For character and environment work a good chunk of time will be devoted to gathering reference and inspiration, or doing homework on a specific subject. I'll then do a rough sketch pass which gets reviewed by the leads and other artists. When I'm on scripted interaction art I work closely with our designers Bobby and Jorge, and for UI I interface with our project lead Josh and Brian who is our programming intern. Q: What are you most looking forward to on Project Eternity? Just the fact that we can put an IE inspired game on the market is enough to get me excited. It's been long overdue. I'm looking forward to seeing all the hard work we are putting in coming together as one complete package, and seeing reactions of people playing the game! Q: Which concept that you have done has been your favorite? Artists are typically never happy with their own work. Next question! I've enjoyed working on art for scripted interactions, and been pretty happy with the results. I've also been putting a lot of work into inventory UI recently and am happy with the results coming out of that. Q: What other projects have you worked on? Before this job I was up in San Francisco working as a texture artist on a television series called Star Wars: The Clone Wars. I've also done some matte painting work in the film industry. Q: What do you like to do when you aren't chained to your desk by your producer? My off time often includes episodes of Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, a cold beer, and dual wielding our two resident cats Puddy Tat and Lil'Babs. They are the best. I also have an unhealthy and destructive relationship with Ramen. (No, not the vile instant noodles. How dare you call that Ramen!) Thankfully LA has an abundance of good shops to satisfying my craving. Q: Do you have a favorite concept artist? Here's a few that popped into my head. I'll link to their site and save you all a google search. Sergey Kolesov Thomas Pringle Daisuke “dice” Tsutsumi On the painting and illustration side.. Ashley Wood Jeremy Lipking Yanick "dusso" Dusseault Joseph Zbukvic Zdzislaw Beksinski And of course the greats from the past... John Singer Sargent Jean-Léon Gérôme The Wyeths Norman Rockwell J. C. Leyendecker Isaac Levitan Q: And where do you draw your inspiration from? Nature is a big one of course. I also think back on how blessed we are with powerful tools like Google image search. We don’t neglect traditional resources, but I honestly can't imagine working at our current pace without it. Q: What's your favorite Infinity Engine game? Why? BG1 for exploring the vast wilderness. I can still recall the music and hear the birds chirping in the distance. BG2 is a close 2nd for its story and companions. The only title I haven't finished is IWD2 which I am playing through currently, and I will say I'm enjoying the combat. Q: Existential question of the day: Who are we and why are we? We're just here, man. There's no why, everything just IS. You feel me? Q: Anything else you would like to share? Long live the glorious PC gaming master race. *lets out a nerdy war cry and bangs mouse and keyboard together* That's it for this week. Hope you guys enjoyed getting closer look into what Kaz does for us. See you guys in a couple weeks.

Update by Polina Hristova, Concept Artist/Nightmare Engineer and Brandon Adler, Producery Type Polina in her natural habitat. Hello, everyone. This week will feature an interview with Project Eternity concept artist Polina Hristova. While a Project Eternity concept artist has to be well-rounded in their skill set, Polina specializes in creature concepts. Enjoy. Q: Hello, Polina. What is your job on the Project Eternity team? A: I'm a general concept artist =). My primary purpose is to design what things look like (creatures, characters, environments, etc) and help get the conversations started. But I also try to do my best at making things look cool and try to solve any problems the modelers and animators might come by before they spend hours building it. Q: What are you working on this week? A: This week I wrapped finished up some critters: the drake and the spear spider. Q: What is your typical work day like on Project Eternity? A: I guess in comparison to most, my work day is pretty simple. I get to draw pretty pictures. The days differ based on the assignment and I do sometimes change my methods since creativity does flow differently day to day, but my general pipeline goes like this: I meet with Josh and the designers to get a description on what I'd be working on. Sometimes these descriptions can range from a simple word to an extremely detailed description on facial structure, hair length and color, outfit, tattoos, amount of skin pores... (okay I'm exaggerating the skin pore part)... and anywhere in between. I'll also talk with the animators if the creatures would share rigs or any other potential problems we can have (it's best to design with these problems in mind than having to change the design a lot later). After that (and depending on schedule) I'll do a number of variants fitting the description and summon a mini-character scrum (Josh, the designers, Rob, our modelers, and our animators). Together they'll discuss any problems or make any suggestions and pick a variant that I'll take to final. Q: What are you most looking forward to on Project Eternity? A: I am really looking forward to playing it. =) But for now I'm really just enjoying watching the game come to reality. I love watching peoples' creations come to life and I give many props to our modelers and animators for all their hard work. I love how they animated skuldr and his sneaky "I'm gunna getcha!" walk. Q: Which Project Eternity creature that you have concepted excites you the most? A: This questions a trick question. Creatures all excite me. I LOVE creatures, aliens (not relative) and things that go bump in the night. I guess if you had to make me pick right now I would have to say the drake =) but I have a weakness for dragons and it’s also the thing most current in my brain. I also really enjoyed designing the godlike heads. Q: What other games have you worked on? A: I'm actually pretty new to the industry. I graduated school in '09 and I didn’t get my first fulltime game job position until Obsidian ('11), but I've had the pleasure to intern and freelance on some amazing projects. I've worked on Naughty Dog's Uncharted 2, PlayStation Move Heroes, some other unannounced titles (some of which will sadly never see the light of day), and the Dungeon Siege 3 DLC: Treasures of the Sun. Drawing one of the endless tide of creatures. Q: What do you like to do when you aren't creating creatures that haunt my nightmares? A: I have a massive range of hobbies, from collecting costumes, traveling to national parks, watching movies, playing games, being weird and goofy, swimming, kendo, amateur photography and more. But when I'm not working, or spending time with my family or friends, I still prefer to spend my time drawing and scribbling... especially at the Zoo. Q: Do you have a favorite concept artist? A: I have a lot and I hope I don’t leave any of them out, but here are the guys currently on the top of my mind: Anthony Jones, Khange Le, Ian McCaig, Jordu Schell, Craig Mullins, Andrew Jones, Erik Tiemens, Robh Ruppel, PaperBlue.net, Carlo Arellano, Carlos Huante, Charlie Wen, and Aris Kolokontes. Q: And where do you draw your inspiration from? A: Nature. Nature will always have us concept artists beat. =) It does some weird ****. =D Q: What's your favorite game? A: I think to this day Zelda Ocarina of Time holds a special place in my heart. Sure the other Zeldas are still great (except maybe Skyward Sword... but that’s more of a controller issue) But Ocarina of time has the perfect mixture of exploration, puzzle solving, action and story, and it was one of the first games that made me go "oooooooooooooo... I wanna do that! This is so beautiful." (Graphics back then...) Q: Anything else you would like to share? A: I like to hide in dark corners... and make random creature noises. =) Crafting Feedback and Answers After getting a ton of feedback and responses to the last update on Crafting Josh has decided to make some changes to the proposed system. Check out this forum post which breaks down those changes and provides some additional clarification. Well, that's it for now. Head over to Obsidian's Project Eternity forums and let us know what you think about the latest update, Project Eternity or your cat JoJo. See you guys in a couple of weeks.

So, I have the various pieces of PE concept art cycling through my desktop background, and I was looking at the composite shot of the Monk, Wizard, Fighter and Cleric, and I thought to myself, 'I hope we see some Cipher concept art soon'. But this got me to thinking, what visual cues should the Cipher incorporate? I love the wizard designs we've seen, particularly Aloth and the female elf. They're a nice diversion from typical wizard designs whilst still having an inherent wizardliness. The cipher has much less existing expectation to work with, and its closest kin in other settings - psions - often come out looking just like wizards with a 'head' focus. The difference between the look of a psion and a wizard is often that the psion has a headpiece on or is touching their temples. I'd hope PE could come up with some more distinctive visual language to convey Ciphers. So what do people think would make a good look for Ciphers? What existing character designs would you take inspiration from? Is their anything they shouldn't do? I think I'll be playing a Cipher or a Chanter, and there's a good thread already about Chanter influences. My main desire is that they'll be clearly distinct from wizards, and also I'd like to avoid the cliche of lots of (usually blue) glowy floaty light effects. They're cool but they've been done a lot. Just like the wizard designs have shied away from beard-and-robe without turning against it completely, I'd like to see the Ciphers have a bit more uniqueness too.

The latest Aumaua concept art in Update #34 provoked a strong reaction in me and finally convinced me to register on the forum and voice my opinion. I've had a problem with most of the concept art shown so far, so I wanted to write up a big post with comprehensive, hopefully constructive feedback instead of freaking out (like NeoGAF is doing lol). And yeah, I'm aware that this is early art that will be revised and improved, but here's some criticism anyway: First, the Aumaua. The first thing that came to mind when looking at the Aumaua wizard was the scene from The Venture Bros. where Henchman 21 is LARPing. In other words, it brings to mind a fat, ugly human trying and failing to look badass. I think this is due to two things: costume and race design. The costume looks slightly goofy and mismatched, but not enough to imply a character who was deliberately designed to indicate he doesn't pay the least bit of attention to looking good. The costume needs to either be sloppier, in a characterful and memorable way, or more flattering. The racial design of the Aumaua is also problematic, mainly because they don't look distinctive and unique enough. I originally thought the wizard was an ugly human because he looks too human; in an Uncanny Valley sort of way it makes me notice all the subtle differences and chalk it up to the character getting beaten with an ugly stick. It may just be me, but I've always found most Star Trek aliens to be gross looking because they're clearly humans with disfiguring makeup plastered on their faces. Whereas, say, Jabba the Hutt from Star Wars is deliberately supposed to come across as disgusting, but he's so removed from humans that it's less unsettling. For all we know he's a gorgeous specimen of a Hutt and there's no need to apply human standards of beauty to him. Play up the amphibious nature of the Aumaua. As it stands, they look like web-fingered half-orcs at best, weird humans at worst. Maybe make their heads and torsos shorter and fatter and their legs longer and thinner, like frogs. I realize this might cause problems with animation as well as clothing/armor creation, since you would have to do everything seperately for the Aumaua instead of just recycling the other races' stuff. If that's a problem, there are still other ways to make them unique. Give them more/fewer fingers and toes. Make their eyes larger with frog-like irises and pupils. Maybe instead of hair, they can have hair- like spines, crests, or tentacles. You haven't shown the Orlans yet, but I hope they're less human-like to begin with. It was mentioned that they have two-toned skin. Maybe they could have short, fine, two-toned fur instead? Give them claws instead of fingernails and slitted pupils instead of round ones. Hopefully they're not just halflings with the barest minimum of changes. I wanted to give some feedback on the earlier concept art too while I'm at it. I really liked the original Sagani painting. The design was aesthetically pleasing while not being "hot" or pandering, the proportions clearly indicated a separate race rather than just a short human, and the costume gave a lot of information about a believable culture that isn't usually associated with dwarfs. I've been less thrilled with the other designs, including Sagani's later art. Edair's main problem is that he looks rather bland and directionless. I remember someone from Obsidian saying that this was deliberate since he's a character who wants to avoid drawing attention, but simply making the design bland is one of the worst ways to accomplish this. His design needs to be the visual equivalent of a stage whisper; implying that he's trying to stay out of the spotlight while still telling the player, "Pay attention! This is an interesting, important character." I'm not entirely sure how to accomplish this, but then again I'm not very good at doing a real stage whisper either. Aloth looks pretty good/interesting. His design isn't perfect, but I'm not really sure why (perhaps too many clashing directions for his character? I dunno) and I'm reasonably satisfied with him. I don't like Forton's art much, but this is the one design that plenty of people have already complained about, so I don't really need to expand on it. I will say that I like the idea that some people suggested of adding more elements of European flagellants to Project Eternity monks in addition to the Shaolin monk inspiration. Cadegund is a character whose design is close to being good/great, but it's not quite there yet. It certainly helps that a female battle priest with heavy armor and a gun isn't something that you see every day in western RPGs. But her armor as it currently stands is too bland once again. It doesn't tell us enough about her. Is she someone who does a lot of fighting and adventuring, often far away from the help of her religious organization? If so, her armor could maybe be more scuffed and dented, or even show makeshift repairs. On the other hand, is she someone who enjoys the full and near-constant support of a powerful religion? In that case, maybe her armor should be more ornate. Or even combine the two ideas so that her church gives her beautiful, expensive equipment which she inevitably ruins from all the fighting and adventuring she gets into! Well that was a lot of criticism. Hopefully it was useful and constructive. Thank you Obsidian for making this game and thank you for the frequent updates, warts and all. I'm sure everything will turn out great in the end. Edit: Fixed the formatting.