[b]An update from the Art Department.[/b]

[b]What’s been done so far?[/b]

The vast majority of work done since the Kickstarter has been centered around creating 2D Assets for updates and developing concept art pieces for the game in conjunction with the tech team ( UI assets ) and Composition ( early sketches of PCs, NPCs, and landmarks ). We’re not quite where we planned to be three months post Kickstarter - but we ran into a few procurement roadblocks that we are nearly completely past. In the past two weeks we’ve finalized our first round of licenses for Maya, Houdini, Photoshop, and Illustrator and have begun getting them into the artists’ hands. A combination of fortunate timing and exceptional sales and support people from the vendors have allowed us to stretch our budget further than expected.

We’re still working out a few kinks with the license servers for Houdini and Maya that should be resolved in the next few days.

The next big hurdle to get over is Asset and Project management, which is being done via Alien Brain and Jira and is nearly complete. We expect to begin using both in the next few days. We will talk about why this matters in the next section.

This brings us to the last bit: how far behind are we now? Not as bad as we’d feared. We expected the holidays to hit us hard, but the impact on the vendor purchases was unanticipated. We’re running between 30 and 45 days behind on our last quarter goals. While rough, we knew that it was a working target and would be a bit hard the first quarter.

[b]We’re working on four major categories this quarter.[/b]

The first is the workflow pipeline. This is absolutely critical to get things done. Without a solid process, we’ll end up with excessive rework, lost work, confused communication, and lost time. Given the structure of our team, this is potentially crippling. Yes, these events will happen no matter how well you plan, but the aim is to minimize the frequency and impact. We’re currently working on getting Alien Brain deployed to and understood by the Art team to help minimize these events. We attempted many ad hoc processes up through the Kickstarter and found that, while workable, it was such a hodge podge of solutions that ultimately, we needed a centralized product that was designed for what we are doing.

The second is the the base character model set. These are mostly done at this stage and should be complete soon. With these we can begin costuming in earnest.

The third is costumes. You’ve seen from the Kickstarter that we have a good start, but we still have a long way to go. The 2D team is working on a mix of requests and inspiration to give the 3D costume team a backlog to work off of.

The last major category is the Avatar Builder. Code and Art are cooperating a lot here, working out the flow of the build process, designing the various buttons, etc. We’re also working out the logistics of APEX based hair and clothing. If you aren’t familiar, APEX is one of the technologies that is used for more realistic cloth movement based on environmental and other inputs. That flutter in your cape while standing still? That’s APEX. We’re hoping to use some of the newer hair technologies, but we’re unsure what the ultimate engine impact will be, so we’re making sure we’ve got the backup plan in place first.

We’re also working on some minor tidbits here and there, such as the cross discipline folks working out UI elements for the game client(s), assets for the website, etc. Most of these aren’t action items, however, and are worked on as needed.

[b]Moving forward.[/b]

By the end of April we want to accomplish the following:

Wrap up character models.

Complete the Avatar Builder stage. This is the “room” the character is built in, along with your basic manipulation features we all know and expect - zoom, rotate, etc.

Finish the Avatar builder UI for the character generation workflow.

Integrate the UI sound effects and music into the launcher and avatar builder.

Polish the launcher/patch client.

Finalize and approve the first wave of costume concepts.
Hand over costume costume concepts to 3D team to begin work.

[b]Wrap Up.[/b]

In short, we’re not where we want to be yet, but we’re close. We strongly feel we can make up for lost time over the next quarter. In Art’s next update, we should have some new things to show you.

Jennifer (Petalstorm) Bolack

Art Director - Missing Worlds Media