There is beauty in the wasteland.
Not in it's craftsmanship,
per say, but in it's history.
The fictitious events that shaped
the world.
The thought that went into the styles of the time.
That is what's so interesting about the look of Fallout.
Unfortunately, all of this gets overshadowed by the
destruction.
The wasteland is just that, a wasteland.
It can be boring.
Devoid of life.
And like, that's the point, but is
that a good setting for an exploratory video game?
That's why it's so important that Fallout 4 is set in such a busy city
like Boston.
Any splashes of life and character help.
It should be refreshing when you finally see something
besides rocks and dead trees.
If the designers didn’t focus
on the small details, like the mid-century set dressing, then
this world would have no character.
It would just be barren emptiness.
They make a conscious effort NOT to put any green plant-
life in the wasteland either.
Anything that was once alive
would have been eradicated during the nuclear holocaust.
That includes plant life.
But this greatly reduces the color
pallet, something they were hoping to improve on since
Fallout 3, which is just a muddy, gray blob.
We can also look at an apocalyptic game like The Last of Us which
handles it’s weathering quite a bit differently.
Look at how much green plant life there is.
The theme was way different here.
Nature is reclaiming the land.
But man is it gorgeous
to look at.
It's refreshing and I know the wasteland is
supposed to be dreary and it does a good job of that.
It's more of an unfortunate setting.
The game also does do a
good job of not being as brown as say, Skyrim.
Fallout 4
works with what it can to provide color variations painting
buildings, cars and other objects in bright greens, reds,
blues, or yellows.
Colors you wont normally see in nature,
providing a very pleasing contrast.
This is where the worlds
design history becomes so important.
It’s the only splash of
life we have left to hold onto.
I guess there’s a metaphor in
there somewhere.
Hey I’m an artist not a writer.
Somebody else can figure that out.
The most interesting part of Fallout’s design is the 1950s
influence.
1950s design is known for being clean,
optimistic, a window to perfection.
It’s a very interesting
juxtaposition against the horrid, miserable wasteland, which
is the ACTUAL setting for the series.
Now, a lazy artist would just paint a skyline that looks cool
and be done with it.
It's easy to paint wreckage after all.
You just scribble around a bunch, right?
Well... with that
mentality you certainly wont be getting hired by Bethesda
any time soon.
They started with sketches by Adam
Adamowicz.
He made some of the fantastic imagery you
see in Oblivion, Fallout 3 and Skyrim.
Unfortunately, in 2012 Adam lost his battle with lung cancer at age 43.
At a loss without their friend, and main concept artist, they
cracked open his sketchbook from Fallout 3 to get some
inspiration for how this wasteland should look.
These sketches are very rough on purpose.
It's SUPPOSED to look like a wreck.
But the goal here is just to get as many
ideas out on paper as possible.
Shape, contrast and line
weight are most important.
Line weight can be used to
show depth and gravity.
You're only working with black and
white, so any sort of variation helps.
After asking "what
would Adam do?"
And getting majorly inspired, the Fallout 4
team got to work on creating a new world, starting from the
very base layer and working their way up to the rundown
wasteland we know.
They took details from a lot of great
design influences that, frankly, get lost in all the wreckage.
They could have just started in the setting that Fallout 4
takes place in, but Bethesda has higher standards than that.
The artists more or less built out the entire worlds
history.
You see, Fallout's world is built around a lot of
perimeters, which could make concepting a challenge.
It has to be 1950s retro, but futuristic. Pulpy, but decayed.
This world has our history, with a ton of different American
design influences, but the timeline diverged in the 1950s
where the design philosophy sort of froze, but technological
progression didn't.
There was a heavy focus on nuclear
power.
To dictate this, the concept artists drew a ton of
inspiration from Atomic Age design.
There is very little
evidence of this perfect future before it gets all dystopian on us.
The artists took the time to draw out a completely
progressive Boston consisting of buildings that were built
AFTER the Fallout series’s timeline diverged from our own.
The primitive buildings of Boston's past would have been
dwarfed by the new architecture.
This is an optimistic future.
It's bright colors contrast well with the old gray
concrete and steel of the past.
Now, take this optimistic
future, and rip it all down.
Ruin it.
Pretend a bomb went off
in it.
Cause it did.
And we're still not done.
Take that, and
age it 210 years.
After the nuclear holocaust of 2077, we start to see a new
design aesthetic.
Now we start to see the Boston we know from Fallout 4.
Now technological progression gets
pushed back.
Everything is very primitive.
Even though we
have all of that beautiful design work, all that alternate
history, it has to be more or less ruined for the narrative of
the game.
All of that history went from being prominent
design influences, to subtle.
Did you see all the cultural shifts?
There's a lot of alternate
history here, and all of that history should dictate the
aesthetic.
So with all of that in mind, imagine building this
world.
Imagine your job is to rebuild the Boston skyline
based on these perimeters.
You have to ask yourself a ton of questions.
Which design
era should we be replicating?
Is it 1950s design?
Is it
futuristic?
Is it decayed enough?
It depends on what the
area calls for.
The institute is one of the only places with a
clean futuristic look.
You can see the atomic age design
influence in the computers and the rounded shapes of the
medical equipment.
It’s stark contrast from the rest of the
game makes it really stand out.
But most places need to
have a little bit of grit to them.
They need to be aged 210
years.
Does this mean the concept artists drew two
versions of every single piece just to show how it was
weathered?
Not necessarily, but they DID do this for some
areas.
While it's important to get a feel for the history,
concept artists don't typically have a lot of time.
Drawing a
whole set twice would be very time consuming.
Painting a
few set pieces taking place prior to 2077 was enough.
However, a LOT of the set dressing WAS designed with
both time periods in mind.
First drawn pristine, with some
color variations, then weathered.
The weathering process is
actually quite fun.
Most of these objects are painted metal,
so besides the cracks, dust and scratches, there's usually a
lot of rust.
This could all be painted in by hand, but there’s
other techniques at work too.
There are Photoshop brushes
that apply a rust effect, or even random scratches.
There's
also decals you can get; Transparent PNGs that you can
just paste onto a piece.
It helps to paint around the effect
though to blend it in as best you can.
We need a word for this stuff.
The act of designing based
on the history of the world.
DESIGNING SEQUENCIALLY.
Perhaps the BEST example of designing sequentially is the
fashion and the character design.
They did it to the MAIL
MAN.
They EVEN weather'd this guys FACE.
Some of these guys went through a TON of design iteration.
The 1950s influenced design is obvious.
Take what's there, and
make something new out of it.
Put some holes in it.
Not only does it have to look like it's been through hell, but it
has to look VERY DIY.
Like it was put together to serve a
function, or to show that it's all they could find, similar to the
scavenging we see in the weapons, items and enemies.
But we can spend a whole 'nother episode on THAT...
History, color and architecture are what add life to the
otherwise dead and baron landscape.
There are a lot of
rules and limitations that make concepting this world very
difficult.
Even as a wasteland, it still has to be interesting.
But what do you guys think?
Did they do a good job?
Is it interesting enough?
Is there anything you'd like to have
seen done differently?
Leave it in the comments below and
if you like this video make sure you absolutely ruin that like button.
You get it?
Like... they ruined this game?
Not in a bad way like, they weathered it... cause like... nuke... ok
forget it.
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