The Art of... Lost Ember
Mooneye Studios brought us Lost Ember, a critically acclaimed indie title that lets players take control of a menagerie of animals across a stunning range of natural environments and beyond. We talk to art director Maximilian Jasionowski and CEO Tobias Graff.
WAS THE APPEARANCE OF THE GAME CORE TO ITS INITIAL CONCEPT? We always knew that the appearance of the game would be an important factor for creating the atmosphere we aimed for. An emotional story and captivating atmosphere was always at the very core of our design process. As such, the final art style itself wasn’t necessarily part of the initial concept, but we knew we had to put a lot of time and effort into finding that style. The art style changed a lot during the first year of the development and we had to toss and restart a lot of different ideas, but in the end we always knew that it would be worth it to spend this time at the beginning rather than realizing something’s not working at the end. WHAT INFLUENCES DID YOU DRAW FROM? The main influences for the art were drawn from Pixar movies like Up, but also some traditional art of Incan and Mayan cultures that were the basis for the old world players explore in Lost Ember.
Maximilian Jasionowski, Art Director
Tobias Graff, CEO
56 | MCV/DEVELOP October 2021
TELL US HOW THE ART WAS CREATED AND BY WHOM? The concept art was created by one of our co-founders, Maximilian Jasionowski, and then built in 3D by another of our co-founders, Matthias Oberprieler. The rest of the founder-team consisted of myself as programmer, technical artist and author and Pascal Müller, also a programmer. After creating the core ideas and concepts at the start of the development, our producer Sinikka Compart joined the team. Apart from these five core team members, we also worked with a
