Stellaris Dev Diary #256 - Making a Station

written by Tim Wiberg & Lloyd

Hi There,

My Name is Lloyd and I'll be your host for tonight. I am a concept artist working on Stellaris and for this dev diary I'm going to give you a look at how the art team brings an asset to life. Specifically I want to focus on the Salvagers station from the Overlord expansion.

[h2]Visdev[/h2]
The first step is visdev, which is short for visual development. It’s where we throw ideas at the wall and see what sticks. At this stage everyone is welcome to contribute, and ideas are often borrowed and expanded upon by other artists.

(Salvager station visdev by Avishek Banerjee)

Avishek Banerjee, a concept artist on the team made this piece showing a station that consisted of several circular openings that served as tear-down bays for ships. This is an idea that was borrowed by me and integrated into the final design of the station.

(Salvager station visdev by Lloyd Drake-Brockman)

Here you can see some of my early sketches for the Salvagers station. My thinking was to create something that looked like some kind of hive, an industrial place that was hap-hazard but didn't look too unfriendly.

(Early concept of the Salvagers station)

When I painted this sketch of the station we decided that this was the way forward, and from that point I was assigned to develop the sketch into a full concept. Although it looks quite different to the final, the shape language and some of the texture ideas are already present in this early version.

[h2]Concept[/h2]

(More early concepts of the Salvagers station)

I spent some time exploring alternate shapes for the station. Most were scrapped, but that's part of the job of a concept artist. The whole time I wanted to keep the lotus-pod aesthetic of the big dome in the original sketch. I also wanted the station to have some kind of long-axis; that way I could give the station a strong shape, and it wouldn't just be a big blob of parts. It's important to note that for each iteration the whole art team is giving their feedback and occasionally contributing their own sketches. Every stage of this process is a collaborative effort.