RASCAL ENTERTAINMENT
SINEAD LAU
CONCEPT ART – ENVIRONMENT DESIGN – 2D BACKGROUND
Layla is an upcoming 2D animated interactive story by Rascal Kids Entertainment. We started early on by exploring the environment design and art direction of the world of Layla. We worked closely with the director and the script to define this steampunk “Timburtonian” universe.
This interactive story has its roots in the works of Tim Burton and the German Expressionist movement. Its architecture is inspired by industrial and science fiction designs and is located at the crossroads of a steampunk world such as Mr Hublot short film and a wonky world like seen in the film Coraline. Using various inspirational media ranging from the history of art to modern works, the main objective of our art direction was to create a unique and offbeat world in complete cohesion with the main character.
To define the visual pillars of the environment design of Layla, we started by looking into how we could embed the contractions in the architecture of the village. Working alongside the storyboard artist the gameplay influenced our creative choices.
Therefore, we tackled most of the design questions per element separately, before moving our focus onto the mood, color and amount of details. This interactive story being built in Unity, this process was paramount to a successful design.
One of the main piece of the town square was a mechanical sun sculpture. It had to give the audience hints about Layla’s world by illustrating background plots. It also had to have action items for the character to interact with in the gameplay.
Exploring various concept designs let us find a good balance between design, animation constraints and game level design.
The final artworks had to be built as high res background illustrations to be used in game. Using light and haze helped us emphasize the dramatic setting of the town square environment.
This second space had to include all the visual pillars from the environment design defined by the town square visual development. Starting with quick 2D sketches to explore variations of the architecture we than moved onto the final layered illustration.
The final space that we designed was Layla’s bedroom. It had to work with the facad of the house, so we started by bringing the design down to a more realistic version before exploring the interior. We then reapplied the more extreme shapes and wonky angles to be coherent with the art direction. At this point the storyboard had progressed and we could implement specific props linked to the story.
