I was incharge of creating all the invorment asset, including the overworld map, important locations, conceptualizing the structures, and other interiors of important buildings. I was also in charge of illustrating the card-battle background when Amalia(the player) encounters a fight with the Shadows.
I started thinking about a proper workflow, since I have not worked with an entire top-down 2D overworld map, which I imagine it will consists of around 20,000x20,000 pixels for the whole canvas. I brainstormed the layout with the game’s mechanics in mind: proportions, camera distance, and character scale were all pivotal. Yet, the biggest challenge lay in the details—how to make every scene cohesive yet distinct? I was thinking of creating a ground asset, 3 variations of trees and bushes, and smaller details such aa fences nd flowers, yet it was clear that the world did not feel as organic.
I actually reffered to this video a lot when structuring a workflow. I will share the link to the video since I learned alot from it and I believe good things needs to be shared.
To create a world that feels alive, I broke it into pieces—designing individual locations at 1080x1920 resolutions before stitching them together. This was an excercise I learned from the previous video.
After composing all the main locations, I then measeured the relative distance and constuct paths based on that. I also created more assets, whith ones that stand out more and ones that are more faded in the background. In total I have created around 200+ of individual assets.
I learned a skill of balancing creating organic art and technical constraints. And Also an excersie of imagining blank spaces. It is like looking at a picture and up-scaling it in real time using imagination. From making sure assets actually fit where they’re supposed to (because scale definetly matters) to keeping the art style consistent across a massive world, I learned that every tiny detail can make or break the big picture.