Voyagers, in December you saw the first look at an Otherdeed in-game environment, captured in Unreal Engine. Your response has been overwhelmingly positive, so the creatives behind Otherside are following up here with a behind-the-scenes look at the design process for Otherside environments.

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Setting out to concept Bone environment immediately highlighted a couple of big questions already being discussed around how to interpret the Bone deed NFT in 3D, specifically as it relates to the universe of Otherside:

1. How should the Bone environment be designed to align with the larger vision for Otherside shared by Voyagers and the team — a psychedelic cosmic dream — while also staying true to the original spirit of the 2D artwork?

2. What elements and principles have Voyagers communicated they want in the 3D version of Otherdeeds?

The team already knew that Voyagers see the world of Otherside as vast, dynamic, and otherworldly. Each Otherdeed is its own contained haven, upon which the Voyager who owns that deed will be able to roam and build to their imagination. The team also knew, in examining the traits within the collection, that Otherdeed environments come in 5 tiers, and that each tier determines an Otherdeed’s grandeur in relation to the others.

That informed the creation of a design system where each tier had a similar set of layouts drawing from a shared library of components. This was done to ensure that all Otherdeeds with the same environment tier are relatively equal in size and layout. The differences between lands of the same tier appear in the form of the resources, sediments, and artifacts related to each Otherdeed.

After determining scale, the mood and tone of the Bone environment was established through sketches and paintings that play off the pillars mentioned above: vast, otherworldly, psychedelic.

Bone deeds are deceptively simple in their 2D form. For some, the image of a vast desert with sand dunes and boneyards immediately springs to mind. But the team envisioned an image that felt more grand, strange, and psychedelic. And thus the vision for the 3D Bone environment appeared: islands that were formed from the remains of the ancient giants that once roamed Otherside.

That core concept gave the team freedom and agency to step outside of the box, unlocking creativity. The end result is the key frame that was shared with the Voyager community (along with the trailer): 

This key frame informs a number of decisions: rendering target, stylistic approach to the environment and the game, and most importantly, the sentiment that Voyagers would experience coming into this world. It also informed the set of hero assets that would be needed to bring this concept to life. All of these assets were then placed back into a rough blockout of the island in Unreal, to be adjusted or eliminated. Roughly 30% of the whole creation process — fine tuning, shading, lighting — happened directly in an Unreal environment.

Otherside is a massive world, containing 28 more environments as unique as Bone, and that together make up a truly weird and wonderful metaverse. As this journey continues, keep an eye out for more behind-the-scenes concepts, gameplay, and content…including this sneak peek at Jungle environment: