Deliver Us Mars - Herschel
Concepts for the level that would eventually become Herschel Quarry. It's the first real Mars level that the player encounters so we wanted to hit a classic planet Mars look with orange skies and a storm looming on the horizon. During the playthrough, the time of day would also shift to sunset, which we later made happen during a flashback.
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Deliver Us Mars is a team effort by some fantastic people:
Environment Artists: Jérémy Diederich, Felix Jansen, Tijn Kroon
Narrative 3D Artist: Anna Udding
Technical Artist: Daniel Torkar
Level design and dressing: Brian and Kevin van Schaijk
Concept artists: Anna Lubbers
Lighting: Nicholas Pålsson
Character Artists: Joyce Uijtdehaage, Isaac Momeni
Animation: Jill Slor, Daphne Zwarts
The hologram room was an important space to nail. I especially wanted to have a lot of bounce light from outside lighting up the space.
No scifi game is complete without a hologram.
One of my favorite images I did for this level.
1/8 Arrival. Before the vertical slice I made a series of images that described the whole sequence of events we wanted. We had very little time for this so all of these are pretty rough. This is the opening shot.
2/8 Exploration. In our first design drafts the level would be a lot more open, so I wanted to really portray the scale of the quarry.
3/8 The goal. Being a hard scifi game we wanted the environment to communicate where to go, as opposed to markers and UI.
4/8 First challenge. Can't go in an elevator without it breaking tbh.
5/8 Under the sands. To break up the aesthetic we designed an underground section as well.
6/8 A way out. This shot served as the basis for the grinder design we put in later.
7/8 Emergence. Here's where we get our first glimpse of a blue sunset.
8/8 Blue sunset. This is a real phenomenon that happens on Mars that we wanted to portray.
One of the first ideas for this level was based on a giant open pit mine.
Lighting design I did for the underground section of the game. Wish I'd gotten to do more of these.
Lighting design for the very first hologram cutscene we built at the studio.
In-game shot of the grinder. Geo by Jeremy Diederich, Kevin and Brian van Schaijk.
In-game shot of broken crane. Asset by me.
Marketing shot of the quarry.