Summary: Former Bethesda concept art designer and art director of "Echo: Airship Legend" Ilya Nazarov reveals the game's visual design concept.It tells the story of a fantasy world of Kukai and mechanical souls that is inspired by ancient Greek mythology and combines sky and nautical themes.In the interview, he also mentioned his ingenuity in the design of airships, character costumes and villains, and introduced his current art team.
In the latest developer Vlog, Loric Games art director Ilya Nazarov shared how the team drew inspiration from ancient Greek mythology to create the aesthetic wonder of airships traveling across the Ilysian sky.This conceptual artist who once worked for B Club cleverly combines nautical themes with sky fantasy to create an Ilysian world that is littered with empty islands and airship remains after the destruction of civilization.
"We overturned the gradient logic of the traditional sky," Ilya explained. "Let the dark blue occupy the bottom and the light blue float above. This concept draft of inverting the sky but looking like an ocean helped me determine the visual style of the game." This setting of the sky as the ocean is the visual cornerstone of the game's fusion of the sky and nautical themed worldviews, making players feel as if they are sailing on the sea of sky when piloting an airship.
[Initial design drawing]
The building communities in the game use modular generation technology, which can be generated in batches but each combination is carefully designed.Ilya said that they specially designed many shipwrecks and empty island ruins as narrative carriers to convey the message of this lost civilization to players in a fragmented manner.As the core of the game, the installation of every part on the airship will affect performance and functionality."The airship is not only a base, but also an extension of the player's life," Ilya emphasized. "In accordance with the ancient Greek naval battle customs, we provide facial decoration options similar to eyes and mouths on the player's and enemy's airships. The ancient Greeks believed that they could bring soul and power to the ship."
[Spaceship Concept Picture]
The character design of "Echo: Airship Legend" fits the world view and closely adheres to the mechanical aesthetics. Most characters are equipped with wrenches on their waists to facilitate the replacement of airship parts.The villain's design is based on the legend of the Greek inventor Heron, who created a mechanical automaton that imprisoned the soul.When players defeat these metallic creations, they witness a moment of liberation for the imprisoned soul.This opposition and unity of mechanics and spirituality is an important visual language for the game's style and narrative.The art team designed differentiated character costumes for the three different positions that players will choose during the game - warriors, pilots, and craftsmen.The armor system also shows the gear punk style, and there is even a chainmail made of giant gears.
[Armor design concept drawing]
Ilya, who once led the concept art team at Bethesda and participated in the production of concept art for "Fallout 4", "Starry Sky" and "Lord of the Rings", specifically mentioned that he is very proud to achieve such an artistic achievement with only half the manpower.Loric Games uses modular design and stylized rendering to greatly improve production efficiency while ensuring artistic quality.He also looks forward to bringing more interesting designs to players in the future.
【Ilya Works Collection】
"Echo: Airship Legend" will be released in EA Early Access on December 4 (PT), and is now open for player testing on Steam.Players who like island survival, airship construction and open world sandbox RPG are welcome to add the game to their wish list and continue to follow the official accounts of Bilibili and Little Black Box.Please follow the artistic strokes of Ilya Nazarov and sail together to this blissful airspace filled with the fantasy of ancient Greek airships.
