Skylost

Role: 2D Concept Artist

Team Size: 25+

Engine: Unity

Skylost is a 3D first-person adventure and crafting game directed by MA student Charlie Anderson for USC Games's Advanced Game Project (AGP) program.

​You play as the adventurous inventor Laik, who steps foot into the untamed Spire which has suddenly manifested near his home. Separated from your fellow explorers, Amelia and Hondum, you only have your wits and the tools you can craft to keep yourself alive.

I joined the project in the Spring 2022 semester as a 2D concept artist and contributed to the following:

• Illustrated 8 environment set dressing concepts, assisting in level design by tailoring visual landmarks specifically for a first-person player perspective
• Created 8 texture concepts for a major enemy creature, focusing on signifying its behavior in gameplay​​

Play here (Itch.io)

Play here (Steam)

Team Presentation (YouTube)

Environment Set Dressing Concepts

I created environment set dressing concepts for 3D artists and designers in Unity to bring the Spire to life. I did this by going into the lastest build of the game at the time, taking screenshots, then painting over them with color tones, vegetation details, lighting VFX, objects of interest, and more. I thought specifically about the perspective of the player when exploring the Spire, and I wanted each Area of the game to be memorable in such a way.

Through these paintovers, I introduced the concept of a "lens flare" emanating from the final island of the Spire, which we lovingly called the "heart island". This lens flare became critical in pinpointing the most important beacon of the game and for color-coding the severity of each Area (blue for less dangerous, purple for more dangerous, and red for most dangerous).

Item and Collectible Resource Concepts

I created item and resource concepts for 3D artists to reference when creating the final models. I focused on creating objects with readable silhouettes that made sense with the crafting materials introduced in the gameplay, and also gave hints to the day-to-day lives of Laik's people.

My first task upon joining the Skylost team was to make concepts for the Healing Bush resource and related items. I referenced colorful endangered plants for the drafts for the Healing Bush resource. The Healing Stimpack item was originally going to be a syringe, which I proposed to change to the new cobbled clay bottle design to lessen unnecessary player discomfort.

For the Clay resource, I used a geode shape to make the resource stand out to the player while still reading as "clay" and not any other similar dirt-like material. My concepts for the color and texture of the landmasses the Clay would be attached to also made it into the final game.

Land Beast Concepts

I created texture concepts for the Land Beast based on Billy Deloe's model for the creature. For these concepts, I once again focused on the player's first-person perspective and impression of the beast, thus I highlighted the ears and belly of the beast when nearing the final stages of concepting. Since Eggsy designed the Land Beast to be a blind animal with an acute sense of hearing, I highlighted the ears in the selected concept.

In the early stages of drafting, I wanted to add stripes to the Land Beast because I wanted to link the creature to the Mother, the revealed antagonist of the game. However, the team was unsure whether we should use them or not, so I created striped and unstriped versions of each concept. The team decided to keep the striped versions because they meshed well with the mysteriousness and readability of the creature.