Art ·
Golden hour on the highest peak
How we captured Brickland for the website: real game renders at 4K, staged gameplay instead of mock-ups, and nothing changed in the game to make it look better.
When we needed pictures for the website, we had a simple rule: no mock-ups and no paintings. Everything had to come out of the game.
Landscapes at 4K
Our art team flew the camera around Brickland and rendered the world at 3840 × 2160: the snowy summit, the forest edge, the castle on West Hill, a river winding downstream, and the rim of the volcanic caldera.
The first batch had two small problems: the floating quest markers that show you where to go, and a few snowflakes drifting across the summit skies. Both were hidden at render time for the second batch. The game itself wasn’t changed. Those markers are still there when you play.
Gameplay, staged for real
Moving shots are harder. A building in progress, a buggy on a dirt track, a plane over the forest and a crash into a pile of bricks were all staged with a script inside the real game, then rendered without the on-screen interface. What you see is what the physics actually did.
The pick
Three hero shots went to our creative director. The winner was the golden one: the sun low over the sea, seen from the top of Brickland’s highest mountain. It’s on the front page now.