One year in the life of an ancient Greek city (new video)

Hi there, friends and folks of democracy!

I just finished a preliminary version of an important scene of the game: the seasonal cycle. What do you think of it?

This scene shows the passage of time in the city of Foititia, from summer to fall, winter, spring and back to summer. The typical seasonal elements are all present: fallen leaves, snow, flowers, rainbows… 

The seasonal cycle has always been a major component of Socratic Democracy, as the game loop is about yearly political cycles. Elections are held in summer; political decisions are made in fall and spring. Winter is less eventful. This consistent structure allows the player to plan its moves and to understand the world in which the story takes place.

I also think this scene is beautiful, calming and contemplative. I find myself playing it continuously, focusing, each time, on how a particular part of the image evolves. But what do you guys think?

Producing the scene

This scene was produced in two steps. First, I hired a small studio to design the city and then render how it would look at the height of each season. This part of the work was completed back in September 2023, as I mentioned in a previous devlog. I then used these images as references to create the 36 frames used in the animation.

But I want to say more because… this was an insane amount of work!!

While the art studio did an excellent job creating the city, I ended up making several modifications to the original design, expanding the city, changing the houses and trees, altering color schemes.

But the hardest part was creating the animation itself, which required 32 new frames of the same image. This was not just a lot of work, but also required a lot of artistic research. I had to look for year-round temperate landscape timelapses to identify how colors changed and textures get modified; how grass and flowers grow in spring, how decidual trees shed their leaves in fall. I studied carefully depictions of seasons in paintings and animations, with a focus on Russian XIX century, Dutch 17^th century and everything from studio Ghibli. I also watched several art tutorials to learn and develop my own techniques in Krita, as I found it hard to translate ideas into reality.

I changed my mind several times with regards to proportions, object positions, color intensity, how to portray the melting of snow… you name it. I am convinced I had to draw and redraw every corner of these images at least 3 times.

My biggest headache was making shadows. Shadows had to evolve smoothly with the passage of time, while also keeping a consistent angle and size. Angle and size are however a function of the slope of the land onto which the shadow is projected, adding one more layer of complexity. Artists told me I could take liberties to simplify the task, but I felt like a realistic style would render a better animation. I know I was not able to be fully realistic, but I think this is passable… (what do you guys think?)

In hindsight, I can see that making a 3d model in Blender would have made the shadow work much easier, even if the final art was 2D. However, I only figured that out too late.

Next steps

I believe this animation portrays well my vision for the game, but there is a lot of polishing to do.

In the next weeks, I intend on adding a few elements that were left out of this version as well as fixing some issues, like the animation of decidual trees. After that, I will work on improving the Greekness of the landscape. The wall and the rocks are definitely a bit off. Finally, I intend on working on a few animations, such as passing clouds in the background. In future devlogs, I will delve into these possibilities and ask for feedback.

Cheers to you all,

Pedro