Project Ghost - Various Work
Hey everyone, I wanted to share some of the environment work I completed while working on Ghost, the MMO that was being development at Fantastic Pixel Castle.
When I joined the team, some environment work was already in place—primarily foliage and biome development by the talented Eric Wiley. My focus was on identifying and filling in the missing pieces, while respecting and building upon the established visual direction. I worked to evolve the overall look and feel of the world, exploring different approaches to stylization without straying from the core aesthetic. I worked on everything from asset creation, materials, layout to lighting.
In close collaboration with the tech art and engineering teams, I helped establish a visual baseline for the BlueZones, our procedurally generated environments. This required balancing visual consistency with the flexibility needed to support procedural systems.
This work includes a range of props, modular kits, and Points of Interest (POIs). POIs were designed specifically to function within the procedural environment pipeline and needed to support a wide variety of layouts and configurations, gameplay scenarios, and emergent outcomes.
From a production standpoint, I utilized a mix of tiling materials and custom assets, as well as low- and mid-poly workflows. Depending on the asset, I either baked RGB data directly into vertex colors or relied on custom UV layouts.
As the sole environment artist during this phase of development, efficiency was super important. These assets represent early-stage pre-production work, each created with a fast turnaround—typically no more than a day per asset or POI.
As with every game, this was all a huge team effort. Loved every minute working on the project.
Big thanks to the team for everything, and thank you for trusting me with all the environment work!
Truly one of the most rewarding experiences of my career!
If interested, here is a deep dive into how our Bluezones!
https://fantasticpixelcastle.com/new-detail/?id=809
This kit was mostly made in a single day. I created a rock wall height map in designer and used it to displace the geo using Maya.
Enemy Camp POI
Tower and Ruins POI's
Vigil Boss Arena POI
Boss Area POI
Burnt Village POI
Floating Island POI
Mountain Cave POI
Mountain Cave POI
Mountain Cave POI
Mountain Cave POI
Mountain Cave POI
Forest Boss Arena POI
Camp POI's
Village POI's
Village POI's
Giant fallen head POI
Shots of the Hub City
Shots of the Hub City
Shots of the Hub City
Shots from inside one of the caves in-game.
Shot from inside the giant fallen head POI, where you would have found a secret cave.
In-game shot of the Vigil Boss Arena.
In-game shot of a few POI's
Gameplay footage from one of the Blue Zones.