Today we’re releasing the first of three development diaries about a graphical improvement project to the fairy area, Zanaris.

This first diary gives you a brief overview of the concept stage. The following diaries will then take you through the other processes of modelling and animation.

Click here to read it.

Mod Joe
RuneScape Art Director

17th April 2009 - Concept

Hi guys, I’m Mod Joe, RuneScape’s Art Director, and I’d like to give a rough overview of one of our graphical improvement projects. This will hopefully give you insight into how we choose projects for improvements and also take you through the different art departments that will then produce the final game assets. In this first part, I’ll talk about the concept stage. In the second part, we’ll go through modelling of game assets, such as creatures and scenery, then, in the third part, we will give you an overview of what it takes to bring things to life through the animation process.

The art team works very closely with the rest of the content developers, and when I heard that Mod Ingrid had been given the final part of the Fairy Tale trilogy to start briefing, my initial reaction was that we’ve gotta improve that area first. Zanaris itself had already undergone one graphical improvement a few years ago, but I think it’s important not to understate how much both the engine and our tools have changed since then. Many years ago, when I first started at Jagex, the art team size was only three artists (!) and we did everything (modelling, animation, mapping, etc) ourselves. Now, in 2009, we have a team of sixteen very talented artists who all specialise in one of three areas: 2D concept artwork, 3D modelling or animation. In the first part of this diary, I’d like to take you through the first stage: the concept stage...

Originally, Zanaris was just a standard brown dungeon. I recall we overhauled it to look a little ‘bluer’ a few years ago, but it never really looked as ‘magical’ as it could.


Screenshots of Zanaris as it was in 2004, and how it looked after the 'bluer' rework in 2006

There is also the issue that the fairy race itself could be improved, both in terms of modelling and animation. Back three years ago we had limited time, artists and tools, but now that we have our specialist artists and a much-improved game engine, we have a greater degree of flexibility in how we create the different areas of the game.

Given that a new quest was to take place in Zanaris, we decided to give the area a total rework, both in terms of the fairy race themselves and their environment. Once we knew this, I spoke to one of our concept artists, Mod GG, to get some ideas on what we could do.

One of our goals in the concept stage is getting the balance right between ideas that are unique, but which are also immediately recognisable for players who are new to the game. When we looked at the original fairies, one of the first issues we had was that they were way too small - you can’t see them very well and they don't have enough definition. The first thing that Mod GG did was to sketch a new fairy character that had a much better silhouette and which would be much more ‘readable’ as a fairy.


Variations on the new look for fairies, using the Fairy Queen as a basis

In terms of the fairies' houses we knew that we wanted them to stay pretty tree-based and close to nature. We experimented with a few different ideas and, at one point in the concept stage, we investigated making the fairies more insect-like, with more emphasis on quick-beating wings and fly-like eye clusters instead of the traditional human eyes. This is something that was echoed in the brown, wax-like tree in the image below; as you can see, it’s more of a nest than an actual home. Given the types of furniture that would also have to be designed (and given the back-history of the fairy culture), we decided not to go down this route, which is why, in the end, we wanted to go with something relatively traditional.


Concept art of fairy tree-houses

I’ll leave you with our final mood image for Zanaris. As you can see, it's nice, bright and colourful, which we feel is definitely right for the area of game the fairies live in. Tune in next time to see how we approach modelling.


'Mood' artwork for the redesigned Zanaris

Should you have any questions about anything mentioned in this diary, or other aspects of the game that you feel would benefit from a graphical improvement, then by all means post them on the forums. I’ll do my best to answer them.

Mod Joe
Art Director, RuneScape Graphics

Hi guys,

thanks very much for all your comments - myself and others on the RS team are glad you all find these blogs interesting to read. From our point of view it's really good to give you sneak peeks of what we're working on

With it being Friday afternoon we're all about to leave for the weekend, but I wanted to answer a few questions now while I could...

"Will this "line" of fairy-upgrade-development-diaries been finished before releasing?"

Yes, although we will have finished the concept, modelling and animation stages or art development the project still needs to have code attached and be playtested and QAed. We are hoping to be able to release part 2 in a couple of weeks and part three perhaps two weeks after that. The actual fairy improvements and quest itself will be much further in the future.

"I couldn't ignore the part of the first houses pic to have a little "approved" on side of it, there's anyway we could ever see any "cancelled" or "not approved" projects on Jagex? that could be a very interesting read."

If this is something you guys are interested in we can do our best to tell you more on future dev blogs. A lot of what we do involves trial and error - something that seems like a great idea to begin with often requires either modification (or sometimes a total rework) before we can get it fully working in the game engine.

"One question- It was a bit vague but did it say that the faries would become human-sized? If so, great, should make banking and getting slayer tasks easier "

Okay - to clarify we have made the fairies larger, but they are still not as large as humans as we felt would remove a lot of what makes them unique. If banking is an issue because the npcs are too small to click on there are tips and tricks we have up our sleeves that will help. You may notice that although implings are relatively small their 'clickzone' of where you need to click to activate them is larger than it looks...

"But is it really possible to make it look like it does in the pictures?"

Glad you asked - it's definitely a challenge, but if you play in hardware mode with all your graphical options set to the max we aim to get it as close as possible...

"Do you plan on doing modelling for INSIDE a Fairies dwelling?"

Yes we are (and have done). This is one of the things that will probably be mentioned in the next diary...

"Will there be a wider variety of Fairies? Most of them seem to be the same thing which can get boring."

We are hoping there will be enough variety, I think without checking there are between twenty five and thirty different npcs which feels about right to me.

"Can you talk about the quest? Will we get fairy magics? "
Sadly I can't mention the quest itself...

"I have a qeustion about the other creatures in Zanaris:
are they going to have a different look to? -like the otherwordly being and the mutated zygomites?"

...maybe...

"Really cool Diary and the new look Zanaris looks amazing! Any chance of it being released as a Desktop Wallpaper?"

Sure - if there's a demand then we'd be happy to do a wallpaper.

Thomas154321 - I can tell you that Chaelder *has* been updated

P8dre - We use in-house 3d modelling and animation software to build and animate our meshes (we may go into more detail in the modelling dev blog). Our 2d concept artists all use Adobe Photoshop.

Thanks again for your interest,

Mod_Joe

Hello there,

Oh, I'm so glad to hear such enthusiasm about Zanaris! Although it got a make-over when HD was released, there are many things that we've got planned for it.... Luckily, it's in very good hands with Mod Joe and his team looking after it.

As far as process, a rework like this is very much a collaborative process. As a content developer, I've had numerous discussions with concept artists, modellers and animators. There are some changes that I've been very eager to see - things that will work well with future content we're considering for the area. There are also changes that have been initiated by Graphics - things that bring the area in line with current graphical standards. There is a lot of discussion, revision and play that goes into these sort of projects, and changes can occur right up until the day of release.

I'm glad most of you like what we've got in mind so far. Please keep telling us what you like and dislike about Zanaris at present, and what you'd like to see in future. Obviously, I can't make promises about future content, but I'm keen to give it the attention it deserves. Zanaris is one of my favourite places in RuneScape; I really like its quirky charm and random happenings.

Thanks for reading,

Mod Ingrid