Greetings, it's time for another monthly studio update!
We kicked off September discussing our new intern program being headed by Yohana. After this first month trial period, we are pleased to announce we are going to be offering our two interns an extension. Both worked hard during the month of September and we're happy to announce that Day Two of Dust and Air is at 90% with production on day three ramping up.
In a show of appreciation for their efforts this past month, we wanted to introduce them and help promote them a bit, if only to boost their portfolios.
First up is Thomas Martua from South Jakarta. He's a digital artist and graphic designer. Currently attending university for animation.
When Yohana put out the intern openings, we wanted to see about filling a long time role that our team has needed. Specifically a dedicated background artist.
Thomas was a surprise. Not only did his portfolio show some background art that interested us, but he had character models with a level of detail that we're currently using for Dust and Air.
Which is actually what we gave him as his first assignment. Helping flesh out our supporting cast members. One of which we can share with you all here.
This character you may recognize from our Day Two preview we did for Muse during a big live stream they did.
It's one of our "red shirt" characters who we meet in Day Two.
While he existed in a large key image background, the character model was something we had set on the back burner because simply he wasn't that important.
However, important or not, it needed to get done and Thomas did it, as well as made some great progress beyond this. Look forward to more from him in the future. We certainly are.
Next up is Alifyanto Bayu. Bayu has experience in video and background work on other projects. He also has entered and placed in a few competitions.
From Jakarta as well, Bayu's portfolio stood out to us in the complexity of the detail being rendered when it came to the buildings in his portfolio. Given that we're designing a world that has some very intricate structures in it, we wanted to see what he could do.
So with that in mind, his first work was tasked with bringing the iconic Cathedral, in the city of Cathedral, to life. Well, more close up.
Much of our shots of Cathedral are actually distance shots.
However, we didn't want to leave this iconic monument out of the story. So we knew we had to get a close up in a few scenes.
If only so players get a sense of how imposing and grand this structure is and why it is such an important piece of this city. Really the Cathedral conference is grand but, it isn't as iconic as the building the city was named after.
To do this, we provided as many references as we could, then provided Bayu with some perspectives of how the shot would look.
While we can't show you the finished look, it turned out very impressive and meshed well with Georgy's art style. We look forward to the day Dust and Air goes to release so you can see it.
Really both did exceptional. Yohana's help with both finding them, and then communicating across language barriers is wonderful. We're looking ahead to expanding this program in the days to come and we're hopeful both Thomas and Bayu continue with us.
Moving on, art wasn't all that was chugging along in September. Writing started in on an edit/revision pass on Abigail's story. So far we're happy to say that her story has grown over 10,000 words.
We've mentioned it before but Abigail's story was the last to be written and the most recent of the full story arcs to be completed. The amount of edits and polish done on it is lesser compared to the other stories. However, her story ended up influencing elements on the other stories. So, it was due up.
Where it fits in future production is to be determined. Which leads to closing this post up. Given production level and time remaining in the year, we're not confident we can get a steam release out before the end. This was a goal we were shooting for and we were keeping pace till some of our team members got sidelined this year. In fact as I type this, Georgy is facing a small medical operation soon. Thankfully nothing serious but we'll keep him in prayers as he recovers.
It's a setback, we're disappointed at that. However, production did advance in other areas during this time. Which should improve our later deployments. We also started up the intern program and are pleased with the progress of it.
Getting the decals done and getting the art side of the Cathedral story done is still possible. We'll likely be opening more testing by the end of the year and following that up with a large round of internal tests before we move to Steam release. We also may up the time table on the iOS and Android releases since we'll give it more time to work out the kinks.
That said, October here we come! See you in the skies!