Hi friends! 

Some of our team headed back home from GDC this weekend, and most of us are settling in to weather winter's last gasp of anywhere from a few inches to a few feet of snow over the last 48 hours (and counting.) Spring can't come soon enough, and wherever you're reading this from, we hope you're warm, safe, and having a great day!

Our newest installment of Dev Diaries is going to be a triple feature - the art team has been hard at work on Ravenwood Acres, and we've had updates to our player character models, dynamic lighting system, and water textures all over the last few months. We're so excited to show off their progress below! 

First for the showcase, character models! The old default male player model is pictured above. Our art director, Amelia, had the opportunity to have some one-on-one mentorship sessions with a character artist who previously worked at DreamWorks, and has been developing the player models in a bit of a different direction as a result. We still love the cartoony feel of the originals, but wanted more defined textures and more realistic proportions to better reflect the art style of the rest of the Ravenwood world. After a lot of hard work, that vision has resulted in new character models, with the updated default male player model below!

Look at him and how good he looks!! The default female player character model and the rest of the character models have also been updated, and we're so excited to show them off in the future. 

You'll get a sneek peak of a few of the new models for some NPCs with these next updates, though! Vurnn is going to help me show off the new lighting system; we got to chat with him during the late morning while he was overseeing the chicken sale here...

...and then caught up with him just before sunset here (and got an update on how the sale was going - lil' guy was still around!)

We're very pleased with the result and how much more immersive it makes the world of Ravenwood Acres feel! Shadows shortening and lengthening in real time will make those early morning harvests and late night monster battles all the more rewarding.

Along with our dynamic lighting updates, we've also been working on water textures for the game - I cheated a little bit and made the thumbnail for the post a water shot (featuring Mint, our resident Master Tamer) so that I can include a different shot and show off both the dynamic lighting and water textures. 

No time to fish like the present! Our previous water was similar to the character models: a little too cartoony for where we wanted it to be. Our art team trawled (pardon the fishing pun) Unreal water shader presets before finding a pack that had some shaders we ended up liking and building off of. And look how beautiful the result is! 

All in all a productive almost-Spring, and one we're so stoked to share with you! Be on the lookout for more updates closer to summer, and thanks so much for reading!

- Kate, Community Manager