The art workshop: pixels by code

Rivenward has no art department. It has a workshop: Python scripts that build every character, every tile and every effect from rigs, masks and palettes. Everything lives in the repository and can be rebuilt with one command. Image generators are not involved.

The style guide

On 8 October an art direction team wrote down the rules nobody had set before:

• Palettes with hue shifting: shadows move towards blue-violet, highlights towards yellow. The base palette has 63 colours, each zone may add up to 16 of its own.
• One light source from the top left, cool shadows, warm highlights.
• A contrast gradient: calm ground, stronger props, strongest characters, glowing effects. Squint and the ground disappears while the character stays.
• Rarity colours of our own from the game's material world: tin, ochre, tide turquoise, rust red, ivory, saltglass green.

Environment v2

Trees with crowns built from light bands and cast shadows, water with eight animation frames, 21 seamless transition pairs between ground types, cliffs as real height steps with stairs and ramps, four times of day, rain, fog and lantern light as a layer above the pixels.

Characters v3

The new rig has eight animations in eight directions, hair and cloaks follow through, hands have thumbs. Warrior, priest and mage exist as role sets in male and female versions. The boss Hollow got a crown of salt crystals and a glowing core, and there are twenty effect sheets and fourteen ability icons.

Harald's decisions

• Proportions of 3.3 heads with broad shoulders.
• Concordat slate in blue-grey (#56637f).
• Logo A: the emblem with the crack, a broken ring as the Tidewall. From now on it is the favicon and header mark of this site.

By the way, the forum avatars come from the same rig: heads cut out by code.

Rivenward Online is inspired by classic MMORPGs and is not affiliated with or endorsed by any other game or its publisher.