One way or another, the character mood thing didn't take (or I just didn't understood it, what was I supposed to do Markus?) and I was asked to this time draw the policies artwork for the game.
Nights of course has 7 policy branches that have less of a cryptic feel than Civ V (I though Freedom and Liberty were synonims, and what exactly is Order to begin with?). The way Nights is set is a bit more clear (they are all forms of goverments).
Now usually these sort of thing would be made by just dusting those old western-oriented symbols and icons (a knight and castle for feudalism, an ss trooper for autocracy, a gigantic cross for theocracy, maybe the Gipper for democracy, etc). And because every other mod out there would have the same thing, I tried to aim for a different approach (afterall, this night time, baby).
So I thought about sort of political effervescence of the turn of the century, when there were numerous political parties, numerous points of views, ideas and theories of how best to run a society. Then I wondered just how did they came up with symbols like the hammer and sickle, the rose, the star, the elephant and whatnot (they must come from somewhere), and thought the best and most global approach for the goverment icons was to come up with new icons for these, almost as if the parties were re-made from scratch (so animals seemed like a good choice there).
So I had a concept, now I needed a good inspiration to start with. I knew the original Civ V had art deco as an inspiration, WPA posters to be exact. But that's not entirely true, half the art work looks very loose and cartoony. I needed a style that felt similar to the original Civ V (for technical and economical reasons) but that had a better feel to it.
The policy screen is just a big homage of the Metropolis poster, I feel it was just a reference that had to be used. I like working using references, I feel it helps clear out a lot of the visual language and to keep the work focused.
and so the sketching procress began.
and then it continued...
And I believe that was the first release I sent Markus with the policies, this time he was very pleased, he wrote me some long emails about ideas to add, things about the mod, etc. Now this is a huge thing, usually developers I've worked with are a bit dismissive or overly critical. Not this man though.
So of course I kept working on it. One of his observations was that it needed to look a bit grittier, a bit wore off. I agreed, so I began to work on it a bit more, I spent several hours working on texturizing the icons so that they integrated better into the background.
And then Markus, had the idea of having on and off versions of the policies. But using the earlier sketch, genius!. But that was an sketch, so I made him a more appropiate off version of it. And hey, seemed to work!
and that would be the policy work so far. The last one having the most Metropolis-like feel.
And that would be the work on the policies. I'm hoping players liked it, at this moment I'm moving towards other graphical aspects of the mod, such as the technology screen and the eras screens, so join me next week, where these will hopefully be done by then!.
Questions, comments, all welcomed.
