Creatures was one of the larger aspect of VFX that I owned. Creature abilities, impacts when hit, spawn, death, and etc were all part of one creature. Also pitched the blueprint to help create the impact system we have for the game since we didn’t have any at the beginning. The biggest challenge was the amount of creatures I had to create VFX for. Most of the dev cycle in New World, we had total of 2 VFX artists handling everything in the game, which I had to do most of the creature work. Proud to say everything got done!
Ghosts: If I remember correctly, these ghosts were the first “magical” creatures in the game. Art Direction at the time was going for the very subtle and realistic approach, then the appetite for more fantasy style grew bigger with the new art director. Exploring the various magical elements which changed over time was pretty fun and my own appetite for it grew larger. They’ve actually been updated a bit more than this and you can catch those in the game.
Dryads: Ah the great Dryads family. I was so busy making these guys that it’s kind of a blur how much I made for this family. There’s regular version of these Dryads, and the Swamp versions which I worked on the most. Overall I think they turned out pretty cool.
Corrupted: These are probably the scariest looking creatures we have. The red and black colors are what defines these guys so I had fun playing with it. The Priest was probably the first mini boss creature I worked on. Our system and production schedule at the time didn’t let me leverage the animation team so I had to animate the skull opening it’s mouth and “stop motion” animate the hand on a particular spell. It was difficult but I think it set the mood for these attacks.
Boss Angry Earth Naga: First Naga I worked on. The VFX here I went pretty conservative due to having performance issues in that particular dungeon. Now we’ve solved all that, hopefully I can go back and put some more polish on it.
Boss Siren: Siren was super fun to work on since at the time, I didn’t do much of the lightning. I’ve revamped what I did for the Shipwrecked Ghost and put it on the Siren. I also made it so when she spawns, it starts raining… then when she gets the half HP, thunder and heavy rain starts to alter the environment. Something we’ve never done til this and I continue to do similar things for enemies that can use it.
Boss Empress: Ah the Empress. Making this one was a bit of a nightmare. We were having a lot of tech issues at the time and the deadline was pretty tight for this. The way we did the dragons weren’t something that’s been tried before. Working that with shader issues while trying to come up with a look was very hard. In the end I was able to overcome it and push it to the finish line. Really enjoyed the colors for this one.
Boss Isabella: The almighty Isabella. I won’t spoil much here. Finding the balance between keeping it subtle but still give it enough “umph!” was key for her. Hope everyone has a great time fighting her and her… I’ve said too much.
Hit Impacts: Hit impact system is something we didn’t have because we just didn’t need it at the time. Then we started creating magical weapons and different creatures like the Ghosts. I laid out in documentations what we needed and we worked closely with engineers to get that system going. It scaled well and that’s the system we use in New World today.
All media are from the game New World and Amazon Game Studios owns all the rights. For more about the game:http://www.newworld.com
