"Ink-Bulb" after Harvesting used for living quarters in Arctic Venalem World
Entry 3rd Person view as one enters the "Venalem" Age.
Surface of water P.O.V. of Bay.
Ink Pods growing under the Ice.
A cut-Off Bulb for Harvesting.
A Cutaway of inside a "Ink-Bulb" showing use of space.
PLAN VIEW of Venalem Age.
SIDE VIEW of Venalem World.Cyan URU: The World of Venalem
Client: Cyan Worlds Rand Miller
Creative Director: Myself
Project Date: Winter 2000
After being laid-off from Launch Media Inc. after the "Dot.Com" boom in Y2K, I was recruited to go up to beautiful Spokane WA. and work for Rand Miller at Cyan Worlds. I have a previous post with some creatures I designed as well if you seach "Project Review" tagged to the right>>>.
At Cyan as a freelance Creative Director, I was responsible for coming up with worlds from scratch as possible locations to "jump" to from within the URU online game. Usually I am handed a treatment or outline of a concept already created by a writer or producer, but at Cyan I designed the entire world myself.
Venalem as a concept was in offering a wide variety of locations to "jump" to, and we had dessert planets, planets on fire, and flooded ones. Venalem was a frozen planet where you arrive in an enclosed iceberg "bay" and must figure out what to to and where to go.
Within this world, natural giant "Pods" were used to create the special "ink" that was used to write in the books for the various worlds. The age had the pods themselves, the harvesting machines, and ink production, as well as the re-use of the hollow pods for arctic living quarters.
I was responsible for the creatures and basic back story of the "Age" or world.
Cheers, THOM
It's a beautiful game level, thank you for putting it out there. Seeing work like this from the games hay day is a huge inspiration and joy to look at. Hope you don't mind I'm going to have to try and build it just on a matter of principal now; It's just to cool not to give it a try. :D
ReplyDeleteP.S. A couple people brought your blog up on the Uru forums so just so you know your artwork is making Fans of the game very happy right now.
Jason,
ReplyDeleteThank you for the kind words. Cyan will always have a warm spot in my design career, I loved working with Rand, he truly is a great inspiring Creative Director/Producer.
Cheers, THOM