Again we are feeling humbled and thankful for the recognition our game, Island of winds, has received! This will be another big step going forward on our journey of making its magic come to life for you to experience!
We are thrilled to have our application for the Rannís student innovation fund accepted last week. Our candidat, Sylvía Fjóludóttir Wallace, has already settled at the studio and is hard at work developing our photogrammetry pipeline further.
A Bucket which was created in the 18th century.
Sylvía graduated with a diploma from Reykjavik Academy of Digital Entertainment (Margmiðlunarskólinn) in 2019 and continued her studies in the UK where she recently graduated from Bournemouth University of Arts with a BA (hons) in Visual Effects Design and Production.
Screenshot taken in-game
This summer she will be taking part in scanning historical items on site and producing them in 3D for the world of Island of winds.
We welcome Sylvia at the office!
PARITY
You know the old cliche “It’s a lot of work making a game”, well it really is true. There is a long way from a story written on a piece of paper and sketches of characters in a notebook towards a ready to play game and almost an endless number of tasks to finish. One of them is creating characters and creatures, just like this magnificent creature we call Húmabryðja. Is she a woman or a spider? It is one of the many mysteries on the Island of winds.
Character creation is often the most fun task to tackle for our artists. Our approach to character creation is a typical one in game development. The process starts with our concept artist designing the look of the character needed, based on the game’s story, the characters own backstory and also its function in the game. Then our 3D artist takes over and reproduces the concept in a 3D model, using various tools and pipelines to do so. We are not done there because the character has to be rigged, with bones and muscles and then animated with movements before it can enter the game.
One of the most wonderful things about game development is that to do this we need all kinds of magicians, writers, programmers, visual artists, technical artists, animators, musicians…even sometimes historians! We love creating magical characters and creatures and we just love game development!
PARITY
While creating the world of Island of winds we have faced many challenges. One of them is producing periodically correct environmental assets in the game from 17th and 18th century Iceland. Many of the items from that time were very unique and have to be reproduced with accuracy.
One way to do that is to create 3D assets from the ground but we opted to experiment with using the fantastic new technology of photogrammetry and are well on our way to acquiring the assets we need and with perfect detail.
This would not be possible without our amazing and well curated historical museums here in Iceland and we are so fortunate that one of them happens to be founded by the grandfather of one of our artists here at Parity. We are also in cooperation with the National Museum of Iceland.
Garðar, Museum in the town of Akranes
What we do is set up our equipment on location and use photogrammetry to capture the items with excellent detail.
We believe by doing this we not only fast-track our asset production but also give each item a real history and new life in our game, bringing the past back into the future.
PARITY
We showed off our first playable build of Island of Winds at our booth at Midgard, the first Icelandic fan convention. We recieved fantastic feedback and people were really optimistic and exited to see more of our upcoming game.
PARITY