THE ART OF

THE WANDERING
VILLAGE

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 THE ART OF
THE WANDERING
VILLAGE
Thank you so much for picking up The Art of The Wandering Village!

This is the first art book of The Wandering Village and it presents a selection of
artworks from the visual development of The Wandering Village between 2017 and
2022.

With this art book we want to show that the process of creating the world of «The
Wandering Village» was by no means straightforward, but very iterative. This is
particularly evident in the development of the gentle giant Onbu, whose appear-
ance and nature have changed constantly over the years.

We hope you enjoy diving into the art book and that it will provide you with a
better understanding of this mysterious world of The Wandering Village.

CONTENT
Artworks 008

Early Concepts 014

Onbu Design 024

Character Design 036

Animation 042

Building Design 046

Biomes 056

Credits 068

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EARLY CONCEPTS
The initial idea for The Wandering Village came
to life while we were still knee-deep in the pro-
duction of our second game, Nimbatus - The Space
Drone Constructor. While attending an exhibition,
two members of our team discovered a beautiful
artwork of a giant creature that carried a city on
its back. They looked at each other and said at the
same time: “I’ve always wanted to make a game
like this!”.
When they pitched the idea to the rest of the
team, everybody was thrilled, especially the art
team. And so, we as a studio agreed that it would
be our next project. We dubbed it Big Animal
Game and it became a side project to contemplate
and discuss. While we knew from the start that it
would be a simulation game, where little people
built a city on a giant goliath, we weren’t quite
sure what the game’s focus would be.
«I decided to volunteer as the game’s project lead, be-
cause I really loved the setting. Being a huge biology
enthusiast, that is where I sought inspiration, as I did
with our previous game Niche - a genetics survival
game. Seeing this giant creature with the tiny people
on its back kept reminding me of the small birds that
help clean the teeth of crocodiles. At the same time
they seemed like fleas on a dog’s back. So I thought it
might be interesting to focus on the question whether
your tiny villagers end up being symbionts or para-
sites.»
― Philomena Schwab, Project Lead
A lot of experimenting lay ahead of the team, but
the vision became gradually clearer. The idea was
iterated upon with countless sketchbook pages,
team meetings and a few early gameplay proto-
types.
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 Those four sketches at the op left were the first drawings ever done
for The Wandering Village. At this point we only knew we wanted to
make a city builder on the back of a giant creature. We also decid-
ed from the start we would be using painted 2D assets. But we had
no idea what perspective we would be using, so those very rough
sketches were early attempts to find an answer to that. Top-down,
billboards in a 3D world similar to the game Don’t Starve, straight
side view, isometric.

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How do you live on the back of a giant? What kind of
materials are available up there? What are the houses
made of? One of the first sketches that emerged from our
brainstorming sessions shows how the inhabitants hol-
lowed out large mushrooms that grow on Onbu’s back and
turned them into houses.

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Very early on we leaned more to-
wards base-building than city-build-
ing. So we had a grid with small
building blocks, where you would
build your rooms and eventually your
entire settlement from scratch.

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 The question of what a landscape on the back of a giant creature
would look like has occupied us for a long time. We asked ourselves
questions like «What grows on the back of a giant animal? What is
the body of Onbu made of? Do materials grow out of Onbu's body
and if so, are they more like horn and fur that grow on an animal,
or grass, trees and rocks that grow on the ground?»

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 One of our early attempts depicted the game in a bluish alien world covered
by mushrooms. At this point the giant host animal was a creature made of
flesh and blood. All the available building materials were parts of the crea-
ture’s body. Players needed to mine horns, cut fur and scratch open skin to
plant their crops.

However, early playtesting showed that many people were grossed out quite a
bit by this, which is the main reason why our team decided to turn the crea-
ture into a giant golem made of earth instead.

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 ONBU DESIGN
On the left is a sketch we used to try out inter-
esting in-game perspectives. We tried to imagine
what it would look like if you saw the big crea-
ture and the city at the same time. At this point,
we weren’t yet sure if it would even be technical-
ly possible to show both at once. On the right are
various experiments, exploring how different
biomes could work on a big creature or what
they could look like.

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We also asked ourselves, which animal species have interestingly
shaped backs or would be particularly suitable for carrying a city?

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 After we decided that Onbu consisted mainly of
earth and stone, the design of the giant slowly
shifted towards a dinosaur-like appearance.
Some of the primordial animals that populat-
ed our planet millions of years ago are among
the largest creatures that have ever walked the
earth. They also had massive bodies with broad
backs. So we started thinking about what a gi-
ant dinosaur made of stone might look like.

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 As the Onbu in the game is very old, the body of
the final design of the giant is overgrown with
roots, grass, trees and other plants. One of its
two long horns has broken off and the plateau
has crumbled away in some places. His eyes are
old and tired, but also shine with wisdom.

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Concepts for additional
skins for Onbu

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 Now that we had an elaborate concept drawing,
we could finally bring Onbu into the third
dimension. But how? Although the design was
very detailed, we realised that we needed to
keep the mesh rather simple, as the game en-
gine could not keep up with a very dense mesh.
We also wanted a painterly look instead of a
computer-generated texture to better match the
style of the painted billboards on the back of
the giant.

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 CHARACTER DESIGN
The most difficult and time-consum-
ing decision in the character design
process was finding the right propor-
tions and amount of detail with the
correct line thickness. We first decid-
ed how big a character would roughly
be on the screen (5% of the screen
height) and then picked a sensible
line weight, which was still readable
at high resolution. Since we knew the
characters were small on the screen,
we tried to find proportions which
had high readability. These decisions
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were important and took great delib-
eration, because re-doing animations
would be very time consuming and
costly.
One design element we decided on
from the start was the use of masks
and protective clothing because of
the hazardous environment and poi-
sonous air. We wanted the player to
know at first glance that the environ-
ment the characters live in is not an
overly friendly one.
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 DEVELOPING THE FIRST
CHARACTER
Our animator knew from the start
that he wanted to do 2D hand-drawn
animation, but he first had to con-
vince the team that this would be a
good decision. The alternative was
using skeletal-based 2D animation /
puppet animation, which has many
advantages. This kind of animation
technique is way smoother (60fps vs.
8-10fps), uses way less texture memo-
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ry and offers the possibility of skin-
ning the characters, giving them dif-
ferent looks. But it would have been
more limiting, less expressive and
ultimately less fun for him to create.
After animating the blood sucking
flea (see page 42) and the chibi work-
er the team was entirely convinced of
the hand-drawn style and decided to
go with that.
Earlier worker designs were first
drawn in a higher resolution to get a
better idea of how clothing, masks,
accessories and tools would work
and what they should look like. But it
was quite hard to translate all those
intricate details into lower resolu-
tions. Later designs were then drawn
directly at the final resolution with
thick lines, so that not too much time
was lost with designing details which
would never end up in the final as-
sets.
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THE VILLAGE ELDER
The village elder is the first character you meet in the
game. He is a trustworthy person who hasn’t given up
hope for a better world, even though his face is marked
by sorrow due to the hardships he has gone through. His
experience makes him the most knowledgeable person
in the village. But as his lifespan nears its end, he feels
the need to share his experience with future generations.
Therefore, he put his wisdom to paper in the elders’ note-
book, which is given to the player at the beginning of the
game.

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 ANIMATION
All 2D animations are hand-animated in Adobe
Photoshop using the timeline feature. Each an-
imation starts with a very rough sketch, some-
times even only round blobs. The first step is
mostly used to get the frame count, timing and
very rough posing right. On top of this pass
follows a more detailed, but still slightly rough
pass. Here, all details of the characters are an-
imated properly, sometimes step by step (using
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different colors for a better overview). This ver-
sion is then shown to the team for critique and
gets refined if needed. Afterwards, it gets inked
with the final lineweight and then colored
using the character designs palette. All frames
are then exported as single images and brought
into our game engine. After a little bit of final
setup, like timing and setting the pivot, the ani-
mation can be viewed and played in-game.
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 BUILDING DESIGN
The design of the buildings has been constantly evolving since the
beginning of The Wandering Village. Their appearance has been
influenced not only by the game design and the story of the giant
Onbu, but also by the technical requirements of the 2.5D view.

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 DEVELOPING THE
BUILDING STYLE Real-world architecture also played an import-
ant role as inspiration for the development of
the buildings: Soviet-era architecture and the
traditional architecture of Mali, Burkina Faso
Many different influences have shaped the appear- and Cameroon to name some influences. We
ance of the architecture, the façades and orna- particularly admire the remarkable architec-
ments. The main sources of inspiration were Stu- tural solutions of the Musgum people, whose
dio Ghibli movies, but also the works of Moebius buildings are at the same time functional but
and other artists. Our interest in nature helped us also characterised by their culture.
come up with interesting ideas: The baobab tree
or constructions created by various animal species
have super interesting shapes. Countless pictures of
different fungal species have also helped us develop
unique designs.
— Stephanie Stutz, Lead Artist

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This double-page highlights the visual development of the
farm, which was the first building we designed and served as a
reference for all further buildings.

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 IRON FURNACE
After we had consolidated the style of the build-
ings, we worked out a workflow that allowed
us to proceed similarly in the development of
all buildings. The first step was an image re-
search, where we also clarified how a building
functions from a technical standpoint. In the
case of the Iron Furnace, we first had to find
out how the ironmaking process worked. After
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that, various rough sketches were drawn,
to which the team provided feedback. This
resulted in a final sketch with layers,
which was then tested in-game.
When everyone agreed that the
building visually worked in the
game, the layers were painted
and thus finalised.
We utilise 2D painted assets in a 3D world. With the help
of our tilting camera, we can give the illusion of 3D-ish
buildings by painting several different layers and place
them behind each other at different distances. When
moving the camera, the individual layers move at differ-
ent speeds, which creates a so-called parallax effect and
helps make everything look more 3D.

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 SCAVENGER HUT
The sketches in the top left show different pos-
sibilites of how the Scavenger Hut could have
looked. We asked ourselves whether it would
make sense for the building to have several
floors, how big the platform for the scavengers
on the roof should be, in which direction it
should point and so on. At the same time, we
thought about the appearance of the scavengers
and what their gliders would look like. After a
few rounds of feedback, the detailed sketch in
the top right was created, which we were then
able to test in the game.
For some buildings, we started with a
rough model in a 3D program to help
us get the perspective of the building
right.

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The picture above shows the finished Scavenger
Hut as we see it while working in Adobe Photo-
shop and the picture on the right displays it in
the in-game view.

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BIOMES
The poisonous climate in the world of The Wandering Village has
created biological sections, called biomes, with unique character-
istics which can influence the course of the game in various ways.

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 POISONOUS
LANDSCAPES

The world of The Wandering Village

is heavily inspired by the classic
1984 Studio Ghibli movie Nausicaä
of the Valley of the Wind. Mysterious
toxic fungi are spreading across the
planet’s surface, making it gradually
uninhabitable in the process. Nei-
ther the giant creature Onbu nor our
villagers are able to withstand the ca-
tastrophe on their own. And so they
team up and begin their search for a
new home, untainted by the spread-
ing plague.

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 MOUNTAIN BIOME
The mountain biome was the first one created for the game. Since it would serve as a reference
for all further biomes, we had to clarify a wide variety of questions during its development:
How big are hills, mountains and giant mushrooms compared to the Onbu? How do the colours
and the structure of the landscapes in this world differ from ours?

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 DESERT BIOME
With the desert we wanted to create a special atmosphere, reminiscent of coral reefs,
but hot, dry and deadly. Huge skeletons should also remind the player that many Onbu
have paid for their decision to cross the desert with their lives.

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 JUNGLE BIOME
The jungle biome is one of the areas most affected by the
poison. Despite the lurking dangers, we have managed to give
the jungle a sombre beauty punctuated by patches of color
from sulfur lakes as well as giant mushrooms here and there.

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 BIOME TRANSITIONS
These images show the transitions of ground textures between differ-
ent biomes. In the middle of the textures you can see the faint path
Onbu is walking on.
The ground textures are mapped on tiles that form an endless path to
visualize Onbus movement through the different biomes.

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 THE ART OF
THE WANDERING
VILLAGE
Project Lead Game Design
Philomena Schwab Arno Justus
Philomena Schwab
Programming
Micha Stettler Audio
Arno Justus Claudio Beck
Naemi Matter Nicolas Hartmann
Tim Matter
Max Striebel Marketing
Philomena Schwab
Art Larissa Wild
Stephanie Stutz
Markus Rossé Quality Assurance
Roger Winzeler David Stettler

Animation Art Book Design

Markus Rossé & Cover
Martina Hugentobler Stephanie Stutz

UI Design
Roger Winzeler

About Stray Fawn Studio

Stray Fawn Studio is a indie game studio based
in Zurich, Switzerland. The company focuses on
developing their own projects which are often
situated in the simulation game genre. Procedural
content generation and the simulation of living
worlds form the core of the studio’s creations.
Stray Fawn was founded by Micha Stettler, a space
enthusiastic software engineer and Philomena
Schwab, a biology loving game designer.

© COPYRIGHT STRAY FAWN STUDIO

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