Rhythm Realms is a unique rhythm-based RPG with a creative and innovative concept — it combines a rhythm gameplay with combat mechanics. In this game, players can dive into a riveting narrative storyline, find popular pop culture references and face the adventure that awaits in each arena.
Happy to share our passion for video games, Julieta Aguado worked with us as color and painting designer, based on the sketches and drawings of characters and scenery by Jorge Cuellar Rendon.
Using photoshop as her main tool to modify the sketches and search for different options, she brought each character to life with her lively brushstrokes and her masterful use of color, fleshed out the scenery where we see them in action, and defined the palette and style of the arenas. To achieve this, she played with the alteration of the color fields, lighting, saturation and temperature, character poses and elements on display.
Due to the target audience of the Rhythm Realms, we decided to go for more saturated and vibrant colors in general. When choosing the palette for the day and night posters, it was important to differentiate them as much as possible from each other.
In day scenes, we experimented with a warmer variant with a pink sky and its reflection on all the elements, but we ended up landing on the general illumination and saturation level of a common sunny day.
For the night sceneries, on the other hand, it was more challenging to come up with a lighting scheme because there were so many potential light sources and at the same time it was important that the characters read well.
At the time of painting the characters, Julieta wanted to emphasize their personality and their roles within the narratives. In the process of feedback and corrections, the goal was always to achieve a result that would be coherent with and add up to the story, thus generating each of the characters’ identity through color, poses, material textures, effects and lighting.
For each arena, she looked for the common stereotypes of the sceneries and cultures she was trying to represent in order to make them recognizable to players, but she always added a personal twist and adapted them to the pre-existing visual language of the game: characters, in-game maps, a little isometric logic and the idea of composing with cubes or shapes with faces that aren’t spherical or polished.
To ensure that all the color sketches of the posters shared a common thread and a certain coherence, we put all the pieces together on the same canvas, so we could see all the illustrations at the same time and have a finer control of the palette.
Achieving the aesthetics and the feeling we wanted to convey was a team effort of constant feedback, creative exchanges, research and briefing.
We are excited and happy to see how all this process and development finally comes together and turns into the unique and wonderful world of the Rhythm Realms. Thank you for reading us! Keep an eye on our blog to stay up to date on what’s coming soon.
