Behind-The-Scenes Concepting the Look of Grindstone’s Cosmic Darkside
Grindstone’s latest updates feature a “new game plus” style mode that re-envisions the main map of the game into an alternate, cosmic horror version of the mountain.
Artists Tessa Dabney and Vic Nguyen answered some questions and provided some concept art to show the evolution of the new distinctive look for the Cosmic Darkside, including a look at the color palette, the use of color cubes to achieve this palette, and the design intent behind the new enemies, the Cosmic Creep and Cosmic Jerk.
What was the process for coming up with the color palette for the Cosmic Darkside?
Tessa: I first looked at all the previous art done for the Mystic and their domain. It’s primarily made up of dark blues and purples, and the portal has this holographic rainbow quality. I thought cosmic blues, purples, pinks, and other saturated colors would be perfect for a cohesive Darkside. We wanted it to be clear that the player is in a different dimension when they step into Cosmic Darkside.
What references did you use?
Tessa: I primarily used the Mystic realm and Mystic cutscene as reference.
Can you explain what a color cube is and how we used them for Cosmic Darkside?
Tessa: I’m not an expert but here is the best I can explain it. A color cube is made up of a set of default colors that are implemented into the game atop a certain sprite. For example, a default color cube is placed on the sprite of one of our battle backgrounds. We then bring the color cube into a drawing program and edit it using gradient maps, tonal curves, multiply layers, contrast and saturation, etc. to change the color cube as desired. Then we replace the default color cube with the new one in-game and it changes the colors accordingly on the battle background sprite.
What was the process for coming up with the design of the Cosmic Creep and Jerk?
Tessa: We wanted the Cosmic Creeps and Jerks to be gross and other-worldly, so we came up with concepts for them with the idea of “sickly” and “alien” in mind.
What other considerations did you have in mind for developing the unique look and feel of Comic Darkside?
Tessa: We needed a key visual feature that would tie everything Darkside together visually. After choosing a concept for the creeps that ooze a green pus, we decided to spread that pus to other objects on the battlefield. It provided a clear visual for the new infection challenge and tied everything together. Now not only creeps, but jerks, gems, and even hearts can be infected. The new resource osmium also spreads the infection.
What was the process like for deciding the visual identity of the new Cosmic gear suite that is introduced in the Cosmic Darkside?
Vic: We thought it would be cool to have the initial suite of Cosmic gears looking like they were made using the same material [as the new osmium resource players would use in crafting it]. A reference that came up was Daedric gear from Skyrim. I tried incorporating Osmium, the new resource, into the new gears.
Grindstone’s town also got a new look! What were the considerations that led to the new look for the town while in the Cosmic Darkside?
Vic: We knew we wanted to keep the town in the Cosmic Darkside, but wanted to avoid essentially doubling the art assets by making Darkside variants of everything. So the initial concepts had portals around the town as if it wasn’t Darkside affected, but it didn’t feel quite right. We ended up embracing the Darkside, breaking the town apart and giving it an unstable alternate dimension feel.
Thanks to Tessa & Vic for sharing this peek into their process behind the scenes of the Cosmic Darkside! Be sure to check their work out in the game itself, available on Apple Arcade, Nintendo Switch, Steam, and the Epic Games Store.
