Hello hello, Tidekeeper Itch.io devlog! It's been busy at the office keeping everything moving!

Today, we are happy to introduce our two Tidekeeper artists to you: Ross and Adam! Let's get movin' right along.

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Kylie: What's goin' on folks? Would you please do us the honor of introducing yourself and what you do in the Tidekeeper team?

Adam: My name is Adam Chizmar and I am the art director for Tidekeeper.

Ross: Hey everyone. My name is Ross Omland and I am the technical artist involved with the world building and decoration of Tidekeeper.  This involves working with the environmental props, weather, or to help create those special materials, shaders or particle systems that help make the world feel a little more alive.  For this particular game, this has been a unique challenge because it's the first time the team has decided to create a larger world that the player can navigate around in.

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Kylie: That is sweet, it's great to have you both here! Let's get into some art specifics. Do you have a pipeline? As in, when you have a new task or feature, do you have a plan of how it generally goes from start to finish?

Ross: Yes definitely! I usually have to work through the entire process of creating the asset before I start. Once the team has discussed what we want to create, reference material is gathered and we've come up with a basic design, I can start looking into the finer details. If a building or structure has special requirements such as moving parts, things that glow, lights that may turn on and off or even have various states to it such as being damaged or not, it can drastically alter how the item gets created so I have to plan accordingly. Once I have the overall idea, I write out a rough step-by-step plan for myself along with a list of any any optimizations that I could include which helps identify any future problems with the creation process, as well as reduces the probability of having to redo something later on down the road, because it's more difficult to make changes once the asset has been modelled and textured.

Adam: For 3d assets in this project, we begin with a general discussion of what art assets might be needed and how it would fit into the story and the world we are building. After that, we find some reference materials and do some conceptual sketches. Once we get a good handle on that, it gets modeled, textured, and put into the Unity engine. From there, we tweak the materials, lighting, and any additional post effects or particles that might be needed.

With UI, it's often much more of an iterative process. That involves lots of reference, sketching layouts and styles, and testing. A lot of testing. UI can be constantly evolving as the game progresses to adjust to player feedback and other necessities from in-game mechanics that might arise.

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Kylie: Oh wow! It's fascinating to hear how you approach all of this. Thank you both for the time and energy you put into all your beautiful assets. :) With a more fun spin in mind, how do you find inspiration for your work as you're moving along?

Adam: I found a lot of inspiration from children's adventure books I grew up with and the art styles they used, like "Davey's First Boat", "Scuffy the Tugboat", and "The Mysterious Tadpole". I also found a lot of inspiration in some artists from the past, like Tibor Gergely and Eyvind Earle, along with some more recent illustrators, like Ben Mantle. These artists and books bring a warmth, style, and life that feels like being a kid to me, and I want to infuse that feeling as much as possible into the art and story of Tidekeeper.

Ross: Definitely in the details.  If there's a way to make something seem a little more alive, that catches your eye and makes you look at it for a moment longer, then I feel like I did my job.  Those details can be items that rotate such as moving fan blades, blinking lights, a banner blowing in the wind or with the use of particles for smoke or water effects.

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Kylie: This is really great! These answers bring such a cozy perspective to Tidekeeper development. With inspiration found and pipelines down, what would you say is the toughest thing you've had to tackle so far in the project?

Ross: There's a little town made of storage containers and scrap in the game which has been to date the most complex model I've ever worked on. The idea was to create a series of buildings, docks and props in a modular fashion so that various layouts could be created in order to fill out the shop area and to give the impression that the buildings all look a little different.  These models would share the same texture and unwrap coordinates, but use a different set of unwrap coordinates for emission textures that could be activated to light-up the town at night. Special shaders had to be created to utilize multiple UV coordinates on the same mesh which was a unique process that I hadn't done before. While this was particularly challenging for me, I'm very happy with the final results.

Adam: Probably the UI. Again, it's a constantly evolving thing in this game as it expands and is tested. I think we are heading in the right direction, and I'm very proud of some of the interesting ways we tackled the unique needs and learning objectives of this game. But it still needs some more love to get it where it needs to be.

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Kylie: Holy crap! Yeah, this all sounds tough. It's incredible to hear about all the learning and experimenting and iterating happening; I hope you're both immensely proud of what you've got so far, too! Speaking of, do you have a favorite asset or feature that you've worked on so far?

Adam: I love all the character artwork a lot, especially Chumby. Chumby was mishmash of sea creatures I've loved since childhood, specifically the whale shark. As a kid, I had my "shark book" that showed someone holding on to a whale shark as they swam with it and I always dreamed of doing that one day. I can't now because I think it's illegal, but I can still dream about it and live it out vicariously through this game.

Ross: While it's something we're currently working to get into the game, I think having everything have a day vs night-time texture set on the various structures has been the most rewarding. When buildings light-up at sunset, plants begin to glow, and trees begin to give off an eerie light, I think it really pulls you into the world and makes it more exciting to explore.

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Kylie: Absolutely beautiful! I hope everyone will give these things some extra love and attention while they play. :D As we start to wrap up, are there any features or experiments you're excited to try out as we continue work on Tidekeeper?

Ross: I know improving the movement and interactions between Chumby and Fin will become a priority for me in the near future and I'm excited to have a more dynamic partnership between the two characters as they navigate the world together. I'd very much like to add character animations and dynamic movement to Fin as you move through the water which I'm hoping will make the overall play experience much more enjoyable when exploring.

Adam: I'm excited to see the world fill out more with unique locations and characters. I'm also looking forward to building out the events of the on-coming storm and what that means to the player, the story, and to the Hourglass Isles.

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Kylie: Thank you, thank you both so very much! Any remaining comments for the good of the cause as we sign off?

Adam: I love Chumby. Chumby is my favorite.

Ross: I'm definitely looking forward to working on some of the content that's coming down the pipeline for the future that I'm sure people will enjoy. More content, creatures and things for players to do!