How does the tree grow: all about the Metaforest Game art design
Giovanni is the art designer of Metaforest Game, he is a professional game visual designer for 7 years. It took him 2 months to design the visual of trees of Metaforest. Here are his ideas and the story of art design.
“From the point of the users, I hope all of them can have a polished handicraft, not like the kind of drinks or ice cream thing that you can add unlimited toppings, and in the end it is like an item full of patchwork. I hope the Metaforest tree that you mint and grow up can bring you a unique feeling.”
Q： What inspires you when you design the trees of Metaforest?
A： It’s an animation called Beast Man in 1990s, there is a branch of the world view of Transformers before. When the finally entered Cybertron planet, the whole Cybertron was afforested in the end.
Because Metaforest project was initially biased towards the metaverse, crypto currency and part of environmental protection, in this case, I want to have some digital products, some informatic elements, and some things like partial technology.
So you can see that every large tree has a crystal nucleus in there, the core is a bit like a data core. Players can collect the carbon energy every day when they use the product in daily life. And the core can be used as an energy source to grow the trees.
The story setting is dominated by planets out of the earth, metaverse. Most of the trees on the earth have been seen, relatively speaking, it may not be helpful for us to explore more content so I set the Metaforest on an exoplanet as an alien tree. In case of this, your trees can actually have some strange growth patterns. There are some reference drawings that I can show you, it may be the state of Installation art and state of partial sculpture.
Q： How’s an alien tree growing in an exoplanet like?
A： If it is an alien tree, its species can be extracted from various contents. our overall function is divided into some parts, such as the crown, such as the soil’s root, the crown’s main part, and the trunk. every place may be from our common tree type.
The tree can also incorporate different themes, such as the canopy like a jellyfish, or like an aquatic plant, its trunk grows into some branch-like shapes, so that the “tree” that I designed can give you the feeling of a TREE, but at the same time it looks like not common to all of people. The state of the tree, if you integrate Metaforest with various styles well, it actually not only satisfies our concept of the tree, but also has a greater possiblity of exploration for future content. For the design of other NFT projects, they may still be based on a simple patchwork of tree parts.
The first batch of trees must have more sources of elements, because I have to consider that if there are more and more trees in the future, it requires the needs of more fields, such as aquatic plants, terrestrial plants, and possibly in some unnatural states, some elements or themes in this field like artificial sculpture can be integrated into the forest art design.
If there is need to expand the concept of tree, there will be more some element types, for example there are some elements in water, so it is transparent and translucent, some of them are like jellyfish and starfish, some are like radar, I think this is quite fun, like radar, but is actually part of tree structure. That is, its shape maybe comes from one of shape inspiration, but its material comes from another inspiration, which is a combination of two different elements.
Q: How does the tree grow?
A: The state of the tree includes 3 forms, the small one, medium one, large one. Its juvenile form is generally match the final form. Basically, the small tree has the basic characteristics of the adult body, but does not have some deep-level characteristics of the adult body. Maybe the trunk has some nodal colors, basic textures, basic textures, but after the trunk matures, it will grow some strange fruit-like things that don't appear in the juvenile state.
They are a bit like the way plants grow in real nature. I literally went to check the growth of some seeds, and what status did a small tree grows to a large tree, and how did they grow from a seedling state to a large tree. The process is actually a partial natural logic, so these are from the laws of nature.
Q: How did the growth status come about? What are the references and reflections?
A: I will firstly consider how to dismantle the concept of a tree into some basic structures, such as the upper part of the tree crown, the middle part of the trunk, and the bottom part of the root system. After dismantling these concepts, I’ll consider where we can make a difference. First, the function is split, then the form divergence is considered, and finally the production rules are unified.
When I was looking for a reference, I found that some trees in nature are beyond our ordinary feelings about the growth of vegetation. I saw some vegetation that was about 4 or 5 meters high. Its bottom was a bit like the bottom of an iron tree. It grows up, and some flowers and bones bloom. This growth method breaks through the inherent impression.
So, when I was designing the tree, I wanted to make the tree look like it could really grow. It is a bit like the normal growth of a tree, such as the rules of typing, such as secondary branches growing after the main trunk forks, and The tertiary branch, but there will also be a small variant on the tertiary branch, and some branches will grow something like a fruit, but it may actually be a petal, and some small branches will grow on it , and then grow some leaf-like things. In the trunk and crown, some are not our common leaves, but more like flowers, which are visually better and more interesting than traditional leaves.
Q: Is there anything special about the tree pendant?
A: I have designed three sets of cultures for the pendant. If the Metaforest culture keep developing, there can be some expansion of other cultures. One is more primitive, some small tents built with traditional sticks of wood, another is the style of Art Nouveau, the design language is based on curves, and there is another kind of futuristic, which should be called Apple language, but it can’t be attributed entirely to Apple language, compared to super-future technology. There is also a minimalist style, which is more aesthetic design in modern design. The surface layer is dominated by some color blocks. It is not clear which parts have exposed to the outside. It is even difficult to see some assembly processes on it, the whole surface is very smooth. Later, there can be some integration of other cultures, and it is also possible if there are some villains.
The components and the elements on the components are in one set. For example, the hot air balloon may be related to the small tent-like house below. If people can live in the hot air balloon on the pendant, the house below is about the same size and can be placed there, just like a The world of Lilliput, but he lives on a big tree.
Metaforest is a very big tree, big enough that you can have a small culture, and a small country on each tree.
Q: What is the function of the nucleus of a tree?
A: They have the function of collecting information. Probably they looks like ore, there are different kinds of drives from different ancient technolog, and different driven methods produce different crystal nuclei in different shapes, which can feel like being generated by an ancient technology. Metaforest has the long-term version, this can be the start of content filling.
Q: What if the metaforest tree have babies?
A: The traditional method of combining trees and trees is actually more like plant grafting. A bunch of hanging ornaments are placed on the top of the tree, like stickers and refrigerator magnets, and a bunch of elements are constantly pasted. This kind of thing, think about it later, if this is the case, the pendant will lack some theme-related things. If the two trees are using different pendants, the mutual integration is just an adjustment on the pendant, so the feeling of fusion will be relatively poor. We will call the collective characteristics of the two trees from the resource library, and maybe add some surprising things. After the two are merged, some surprising elements will appear, which looks more interesting.
In addition, some ideas like the pendant part, I hope it could be looked like the Lilliput type, and it may also span some different kingdoms, which may be more primitive, or more furturist, but on the whole, they are all pollution-free countries, either with very high technology, or hold the clean energy technology, otherwise it can be some primitive tribes, some more natural kind of cremation or elves. In short, it can actually removing some toxic cultures from a heavily polluted period of human history.
