The JumpStart Art Team is hard at work developing a virtual meeting place which will live at JumpStart.com. This “main street” will include an expanded avatar builder, arcades, shops, and will quite literally be a virtual playground for kids ages 3-12.
So how exactly does the art team create a 3D building?
I caught up with Christopher Williams, Knowledge Adventure’s Senior Art Director to find out. According to Chris, once he and Knowledge Adventure’s producers have identified a project, his team selects a style or theme for the characters, buildings or landscape they’ll be creating. Then the concept sketching begins.
A few notebooks and colored pencils later, here’s what they’ve got:
Pretty impressive, right? But, since they are not producing flat illustrations for a book, the artists now need to turn these sketches into 3D objects. Using a 3D modeling tool, the artists stretch, twist, bend and mold polygons to match their sketches – basically creating tiny building blocks and adding them together to form any object imaginable, from a puppy to a Ferris Wheel.
Using this modeling tool, a sketch morphs into a 3D building!
Now since that gloomy gray color certainly can’t appear in a game, the artists carefully select colors and textures to match the building. From bricks to tile to stucco to shiny plastic, the artists can make their building look as though it was built from just about any material imaginable!
Next it’s off to be animated and added into the game itself – but that’s a story for another issue.
Keep an eye out for all new buildings coming to life at JumpStart.com this holiday season!
Filed under: Behind the Scenes | Tagged: game art, technology, what's new
