How we’re building our dream pub in our cozy video game - Part 1

The Frosty Moon Pub Poster

The Frosty Moon poster was created by Dmytro, our senior pixel artist.

Pull up a bar stool and grab a pint! It’s time to unveil The Frosty Moon Pub, one of the central village buildings in our cozy video game, Moonfrost. In this behind-the-scenes blog, Jase our Marketing Community guy will interview members from the art department about their creative process that brought this charming pub to life.

Whether you're a gamer, an artist, or a fan of quaint British architecture, read on to learn how we blend real-world inspiration and artistic collaboration to create an iconic social hub for our players.

Step One: The Brief

Before diving into a particular building we iterated and tested several village mock-ups and in-engine block-outs with the focus of exploring the general layout and environment of our village. Once the team had agreed on the (close to) final version of the village, it then led to some real-life expeditions to some of the finest drinking establishments on this tiny island (Britain), all in the name of creating a social hub for our players!

Some questions we always ask when creating a building in-game are:

• What is the building, and what’s its purpose in the game?
  

• Who owns the building, and what is their background story and personality?
  

• Are there any key items needed to signpost the building visually by decor, which may tie in well with the owner's backstory?
  

• Where is the building located in the village?
  

• Are there any essential pathways (doors) that need to be in particular areas?

  
  

(Signposting refers to all the artefacts in a game that are based on visual aesthetics that fill a game space with content to support player navigation, orientation, and progression through the space and narrative.)

This then allows the artists to then begin the process of creating the concept version before passing it along to the pixel art team. In this scenario, Sammi (concept artist) worked closely with Dmytro (pixel artist) who has already designed the front of the pub when creating this awesome poster.

Step Two: Research Process

With the brief in hand and a clear understanding of what is needed, Sammi (in this case for the pub) then has her own unique research approach; some people may think that you can just use other games as references and that’s it. Well, you can - but she likes to do things a little differently here at Oxalis Games. We want Moonfrost to feel like you're in a real 'quaint’ and ‘cozy’ British village. To capture this Sammi actually goes out in the real world to look at buildings and architecture, she takes photos and sometimes creates sketches and pulls all her reference materials together in a mood board, where she then can start to go into the detail of what our pub will actually look like.

Step Three: Concepting and Block-Outs

The village layout plays a big part in how the Frosty Moon was created. It went through several iterations until we finally ended up with the final design block out (far right).

Pub Block-out designs

Sammi then went on to get the basic key elements she’d like to get into the exterior whilst trying to get the right balance and proportions to make sure the design elements were correct for the building.

Concept art of 'The Frosty Moon'

Step Four: Feedback Loop

As you can see, the pub exterior is starting to take shape - but there is still a lot of work to be done. We needed to fine-tune the exact features we wanted to showcase, so with some feedback from our Art Director and Narrative Designer the Frosty Moon was then ready to get a full concept pass.

Watch how our pub comes to life...

Step Five: Polish and Handover

One really important element to highlight in creating a concept piece is this will be passed onto the pixel artists to then create the in-game assets. It’s always important to remember that Moonfrost has a fixed isometric camera so the perspective needs to be thought of at each stage. Sammi really focuses on this, so it may take a few iterations to get the perspective correct and then also the scaling correct to be transformed into its pixel form.

As you can see above, in the later stages Sammi begins adding colour! Sammi did have a little trouble trying to balance the green and red without it feeling too Christmassy - it can be really tough to get the right palette.

From here there is a final round of feedback, and once it’s approved it will go to the Pixel Art Team and be implemented into the game! Which we will continue that in a second blog series later this year.

So if you fancy grabbing a cheeky pint together and a bag of crisps in The Frosty Moon, we'd really appreciate you spreading the word of Moonfrost and our pub opening! <3