Tom Kitchen writes:
So this was my design constraint for the Emporium scenes – take a location and imagine a tornado tore through it – and all that it left behind were things that had emotional relevance to a specific memory. Body of Water is one of the few scenes in Emporium taken from my own memory bank – I was maybe 4/5 years old. It was a family day out at a nondescript dock/pier and we were about to hop on a boat tour or something? All I remember is looking down down and seeing the water rushing bellow through the wooden slats. At the time it felt like a long way down and the water seamed impossibly deep and massive. It was the first time I remember experiencing a mortal fear – like I am able to die and the water below me has the capacity to make that happen – you know, typical kid stuff. It was this memory that set the scene for Body of Water. The rest is just making shapes in blender.
Emporium was my first time making a full 3D game, So I figured low poly would be an easy approach for a novice. But now, after working on more hi def models I wouldn’t say that low poly stuff is necessarily easier. It’s definitely quicker – but things like colour, readability and the overall silhouette require a very different sort of consideration compared to more photo realistic stuff. So 90% of the stuff in Emporium is just low poly box modelling – mostly tweaking cubes and cylinders – I leant heavily on Blenders boolean modifier as well. Flat colour pallets for textures/materials and so on. There’s nothing super technical happening really.
