Working in a such team where everyone is in sync is an amazing experience and it’s a great joy to see other guys came up with stunning ideas. DC already fleshed out water dancers and now furiously working on one of the characters.

Now, back to Aquapolis. Located at the west ocean Aquapolis is a huge city mixing various cultures and styles like a fantasy Babylon. It’s a hot spot or hub for commercial traffic from east to west and to many other countries. Officially the city is ruled by the group of citizens, representatives of noble families and guilds.

In Aquapolis you could find pretty much everything, from grand massive guild towers:

…to tiny streets and narrow passages with many shops and stores:

These districts are very chaotic by it’s nature… there is very little formal planning, the streets are just like veins with twists and turns.

The technology in Rainbow Dreams allows for building skyships thus there are various machinery could be seen in the city. Refill stations you see below are used by the skyships before and after the long flights:

To be continued…

Another thing that sparks my attention was a debut trailer for Settlers: Paths to a Kingdom. The legendary Settlers returns to PC in 2010. I remember playing it many years ago and enjoying the green hills and medieval music motifs playing at background. The debut trailer is very and very interesting in terms of creativity. Who knows, maybe somewhere in the future classic table top based games (like Warhammer) would be played like that?

Make sure to check the developer diary with Fumito Ueda, creator of The Last Guardian and experience new bits of footage from his epic adventure.

And if you’re in the creative mood, there are some nice threads goin’ on at ConceptArt.Org. First, check the massive art dump by Marko Djurdjevic with tons of artwork from Marvel universe. This dude is insane you know. But Guild Wars 2 guys are still goin’ crazy with loads and loads of conceptual art. If you’re a fan or prefer hard copies don’t miss their new artbook featuring all that stuff!

Wakkawa a.k.a. Jace Wallace got some nice chicks in his thread. There are some nudies so be warned!

Ooops! Almost forgot! Sergey Kondratovich throw a ton of stuff from Magesty 2 and other projects. Your mouse would suffer, I promise!

ps. In conclusion, you could experience JFBuckner’s MEMORIES SANCTUS Chapt.1 online manga and get some sleep. Cheers guys!

Make sure to check out the official studio website at www.massiveblack.com that got a recent revamp with lots and lots of new stuff. MB has established quite a trend in outsoursing art for entertainment industry so if you’re in the same boat you have to keep an eye on these bad boys!

Ow and if you’re into abstract art don’t miss Andrew Jones thread with recent updates on The Art of Beauty from live online presentation and other events. Internet is a truly cool thing.

Two guys Martin Bergquist and Tony Holmsten started their own freelance illustration/design business presenting a portfolio with Fortress stuff as well. I’ve seen some art dumps at deviantart (arcipello, tonyholmsten) and such things are quite common when big company collapse.

Well losing jobs isn’t that great and I feel sorry for the guys. At the same time I think it’s naturally following from the fact that lots of videogame developers doing the same things. How many times you were fighting against the SWAT guys in futuristic settings? To survive on market and attract players you need something fresh and different.

What was cool about that project is it’s visual design approach. The technology is moving very fast but design could be timeless. Project Offset offers you heroic fantasy adventure in a vast, exotic world forged with magic and sorcery. Some of the locations actually reminds me of the things I’ve imagined while reading Conan novels by Robert Howard.

If you’re a techy geek then visit the technology section and see all the possibilities and features of Offset engine. For artistic folks, well concept art section and especially environments would definetely put you on fire.

Don’t miss Khang’s Video Blog – Part. 1! Khang Lee is a conceptual artist who has started to visualize Project Offset from the beginning. Now holding an Art Director position he’s still responsible for Project Offset look and feel.

There are also some sort of competition is going on. If you’re familiar with 3D and in-game models creation techniques then you can submit your model(s) to the guys and pray for the best. Looks like talent hunt but someone may be interested anyway.

http://www.projectoffset.com/