Kaya's Vale: Concept Art

Protagonist Concept Work - Apollo the Allosaurus

The design process of one half of Kaya's Vale's protagonists: Apollo!

Apollo is a friendly, curious and strong-willed Allosaurus - Kaya's faithful companion. Apollo underwent a complete re-design during the various phases of the development of Kaya's Vale. A simplified and striking yet soft and rounded design to match his (mostly) firey personality.

Apollo is the only dinosaur that features a vibrant red and orange colour scheme - to help him stand out in a very foreign and forest-green, overgrown environment. 

Apollo is an invasive species in the world he finds himself lost within - I was inspired by the works of Pablo Rivera throughout the design processes of all the dinosaurs to give them each unique, vibrant and striking speculative designs with a stylized charm.

The endless possibilities were very fun to explore; resulting in many, many iterations!

Kaya's Vale - Dinosaur Design Iterations

Some of these designs feature a Sinosauropteryx (sino-sor-op-terix) spirit guide with the purpose of being a guiding presence - summoned by Kaya (the player) whom has a special connection with dinosaurs, giving her the title of 'Dinosaur Whisperer' within her tribe.

Kaya's Vale - Prop and Environment Concept Work

'Dino Ceremony' Prop Set - A series of design sheets working towards a refined set of prehistoric dinosaur-themed ceremonial props. Exploring the idea of a 'dinosaur bonding' ceremony, that could have taken place within the tribes of Kaya's Vale that worship dinosaurs as ancient, sacred beings.

Each prop was designed with the idea of it's function as a device in mind. I went through an extensive research phase to find information and references about real-world ceremonies and devices to help with the believability of each design. 

I was particularly inspired by the Buddhist Obon Celebration/ Ritual that takes place in Japan in which people hang lanterns in front of their homes before placing them into flowing bodies of water to guide ancestral spirits away.

This inspired a lot of my lighting device designs and how they could potentially be used with reference to the worship of dinosaur spirits and souls. Below are images collected looking through James Gurney's Dinotopia: A Land Apart From Time as additional reference during idea generation.

Kaya's 'Raptor Claw' Knife

Environmental Story-telling - Lunarian & Dominion Scrolls

Environmental Structures - Whisperer's Shrine & Lighting Concepts

Bioluminescence is a strong theme throughout a lot of my concept work for this world. I looked into a lot of different real-world organisms and creatures to get a realistic reference of how this phenomenon manifests in real life. Dinoflagellates are the organisms that are found in bioluminescent bodies of water, and the patterns these create were a huge inspiration to me. 

I played around a lot with the fictional idea of 'bioluminescent grass or moss' in a lot of my concepts that the tribe would then harvest or capture and use as a decorating tool on items and structures or simply to light up spaces as an alternative to primitive campfires and torches.

An example of this is my 'light orb' design - these orbs filled with luminescent fluid would be scattered around an environment to light it and give it a blue, other-worldly glow.

Kaya's Vale - Logo Design Iterations

A breakdown of the many iterations and refinement process that went into the design of the Kaya's Vale logo.

I used a lot of shape design within this process and was eventually drawn to a circular brush-stroke visual that seemed the most visually striking and appealing. I wanted the theme of bioluminescence to be represented via the logo's vibrant blue against a dark background, broken up by the dinosaur scale inspired pattern on the final design.

Thankyou for taking the time to look at my work!