Gaijin – Art Directing

04.02.2021

Hi everyone!

A few weeks ago we asked you on the Gaijin group if you’d like to know the backstories of the process of formation the project. Many of you said yes so today we will spoil some details about our graphic designers’ work.

Although gameplay in Gaijin is set in futuristic Japan we wanted to recreate the traditional climate of The Land of the Cherry Blossom.

To do so part of the artworks were based on real places – in that particular case, it was Higashi-Honganji Temple in Kyoto.

Gaijin’s creators during their visit to Japan made hundreds of photos and videos (that’s what you call work&pleasure!), which later were very helpful in designing the game. Making artworks that are supposed to imitate real places is way different than creating your own conceptional project. Aside from the graphic artist’s talent, there is also a good starter that counts- a picture. The one we used was made with a full-frame camera with 14 mm wide lens on it. Thanks to which we could curve the perspective a little bit to make the temple look more monumental.

After preparing the virtual model of the photo there is time for choosing the right set of colors, adding some details, and giving it a futuristic vibe. We did our best to mix both traditional Japanese style and our vision of futuristic overtaken by the AI world and closed it in one project. That’s the final design of the Temple:

Let’s take a look at the base photo and WiP project of the banner of this topic:

In my opinion, the final effect is just stunning! Let us know what you think!

Kudos to Krzysztof Piasek, our graphic designer who did most of the work here! If you wanted to see a lot more of his artworks, I encourage you to check Krzysztof’s portfolio. All of them are just amazing and we are lucky to have him on board!

There are some other places we re-created in Gaijin, do you know where these places are?