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The Number One Educational Resource for the Game Industry

Session Name: Creating the Art of 'ABZU'
Speaker(s): Matt Nava
Company Name(s): Giant Squid Studios
Track / Format: Visual Arts

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Overview: In this talk, the creative director of 'ABZU', Matt Nava, will give insight into the unique art style of the game, and the processes that he and the team at Giant Squid developed to create it. The underwater setting in 'ABZU' presented many technical and artistic challenges uncommon in most games, such as animating vast amounts of fish, simulating huge dynamic kelp forests, and modeling undersea lighting and atmospherics. Additionally, the team needed to devise a method of creating artistically authored terrains that were visually integrated with the variety of objects in a given scene, yet pliable enough for near constant large scale revision. Nava will share artwork from throughout the development cycle to explain the solutions and tricks that the he and the team devised to tackle these problems and bring the rich, living world of 'ABZU' to life.

GDC 2017

Matt Nava

Giant Squid Studios

free content

Visual Arts

Visual Arts