Snowy Village

[Silvana Fleischacker]

SnowyVillage is an Action card from Menagerie. It is a village that gives a large number of +Actions, but at the cost of preventing you from getting any more +Actions for the rest of the turn.

Snowy Village is based on an idea debuted in a parody Christmas Kingdom by Donald X. Vaccarino and head playtester LastFootnote. In the parody kingdom, Snowy Village only cost , but it gave only 2 Actions and no +Buy.

The area starts off in a gloomy, fenced section with a small house. Going north is the field, a much brighter sight with dead trees around and some houses, where one of them is open, leading to a room spanning two floors, with light flowing from the windows. Heading west of the field is the southwestern section of the village. Within this section is an isolated humanoid entity who runs amok when the Chainsaw effect is equipped or Wolf effect is used, dashes when the Insect effect is used, and gets frozen in place with the Crossing effect. Near the path to the northern gate is a house with stained glass windows and an opened door, which leads to a small dimly-lit room, where equipping the Glasses will reveal the ghost of a maiden sitting on the chair in front of the table with a book on top.

Beyond the gate of the southwestern village is a walled field, where you can find the plaza and some sheds, in which the plaza houses a tree with streetlights on the center, with the area going bright upon approaching the tree. Shortly west of the plaza is a light-purple creature emerging from a hole, who reacts to the Chainsaw, Crossing, Telephone, Wolf, Fairy, Cake, and Child effects, and changes appearance with the Marginal, Bunny Ears, Boy, Gakuran, and Invisible effects. East of the plaza is the much expansive northern village section.

Heading west upon entering the northern village, there is an open building to a small sanctuary with an egg inside a cage, where this egg will grant Menu Theme #27. Going further northwest, you can find Black Dove, whose appearance changes with the Marginal, Chainsaw, Glasses, and Lantern effects, follows you with the Penguin effect equipped, spins upon using the Fairy effect, runs away when using the Wolf, dashes when the Insect effect is used, and gets stopped when using the Crossing effect. Shortly west of Black Dove is an open house with some stained glass windows, inhabited by a young girl with candles on her head, who becomes invisible, save for her candles when equipping the Chainsaw, gets petrified when Marginal is equipped, and wears a different outfit without her candles when the Red Riding Hood effect is equipped. Equipping the Red Riding Hood effect unlocks Wallpaper #300. Also, a stuffed animal appears on the upstairs bed if the Red Riding Hood effect is equipped. This house has a back door to an isolated section of the Misty Bridges, which is a small garden where fairies frolic around. The eastern side of this section of the village has a large estate, where the balcony houses a copy of Urotsuki sitting on the bench.

Inside the estate, you start off in a corridor with vines sprawling the walls, leading to the entrance of a theater. Inside the theater's stage are two neon creatures with masks similar to the ones in the entrance, as well as an open doorway behind them. Interacting with it will open it with a jingle, leading you to Marble Ruins. Using the Glasses effect will reveal a shadow audience watching the stage. If you equip the Marginal effect here, the dancing figures lose their color and freeze. Using the Rainbow effect makes the Mask Twins move rapidly around Urotsuki. Equipping the Chainsaw effect causes the Mask Twins to move quicker. Using the Invisible effect will make the Mask Twins just their neon outlines.

The theme and the concept of this work was a snowy village in the Japanese countryside. The course lasted 10 weeks, so in order to finish every task, time-management was extremely important. I am a full-time worker, so I spent around 3 hours after work and weekends to complete the tasks. I made a to-do list as I was limited in time.

I work efficiently utilizing my past experiences. Basically, I re-use various models. Even when producing singular assets such as houses, ground textures, cliffs, trees, plants, and rocks, I produce these works efficiently by re-using various works.

The cliff model was sculpted in ZBrush from scratch. First, I choose the basic concept and then analyze the picture. During this step, I think of the possibilities of re-usage and sculpt silhouettes and details that will be the easiest to use.

Avoid making the ratio between the plain surface and the surface with detail equal for all the surfaces. Just like the one in the picture, make the ratio to be 50:50 for one surface and 80:20 for the opposite surface. You can select them for later layout.

The important aspect of this work was how to put withered weed on top of the snow. I have made several kinds of weed. I have created several kinds of weed different in length and applied them on in UE4 while being conscious of the compositional balance.

For conifer tree, I have created one tree trunk and three types of basic shape branches with low polygons. The combination of them ended with ten different kinds of branches in total. High polygons were used for the lowest part of the tree which is the closest part to the player. For the section that is the furthest from the player, I only applied one layer of low polygon branches. This way, I was efficiently arranging them to reduce the number of polygons. Always be conscious of the height and perspective of the player, it will allow you to approach the assets efficiently in terms of polycount. This is the fundamental aspect of game production.

The snow and soil were created procedurally with Substance Designer. Here, I referred to the tutorial by Daniel Thiger for making the snow shader. I learned the basics from it. created my snow shader and arranged it.

I created this kind of lighting because I wanted to express the atmosphere of the morning in the winter time. I also wanted to express the icy coldness in the air and the beautiful view of the morning sun.

The lighting process was very simple. I used Skylight and Directional Light and later used Post Process Volume. The snowy landscape with plenty of snow on the ground is full of white color which often has little information thus creating a feeling of loneliness. I have added the shadows on the ground which increased the amount of information.

When doing the lighting, it is best to study the reference image and analyze what and how much of the elements are missing. I believe that narrowing down these necessary elements should be arranged and applied appropriately rather than simply guessing.

Looking for snowy village Dec 252024/7/26 22:31 I am looking for a village that might have snow on Dec 25 that is accessible by shinkansen from Toyko, and is not in a ski resort. I was hoping to stay at Ginzan Onsen but you have to book accommodation a year in advance. We have booked a hotel in Tendo for now but if anyone has any recommendations would be good to know. We don't have time to go as far as Shirakawago, and we will not have a car. Thanks!by JacTaf

I stamped the mountain stamp in chipped sapphire (also known as absolute favourite blue ink) taking care to leave a bit of the stamp un-inked so there would be an open white area of snow. I blended some of the stamped ink, adding black here and there but kept some untouched to look crisp.

I painted all the buildings with distress inks smooshed on my glass mat (iced spruce, hickory smoke, rustic wilderness and candied apple). While they dried I painted the water and the snowbanks around the village. After that all dried I painted the sky with chipped sapphire then returned to the buildings to add grey shadows on and around the snow covered rooftops. I added the windows and doors with a grey marker and extra definition to the shore line with a black marker.

Some of you may remember me mentioning a while back an interest in trying gouache paint. The Foiled Fox kindly sent me some to try and I have been learning and practicing the techniques over the last couple of months. I am sharing over on their blog today so make sure you visit to read more about my process. Gouache is an opaque acrylic paint with some similarities to watercolour paint. It is possible to dilute with water until it becomes somewhat transparent but it is more common to see it used in its opaque form. I watched several videos to learn what to do (and what not to do!) and will continue to experiment.

One key fact I learnt after trying to paint with several colours right out of the tube is the need to mix with a little water to get a creamy consistency. Another important thing to note is that unlike watercolour, where I add water to get a lighter shade, with gouache I add white paint. In the photo above you can see two panels side by side. I taped the watercolour paper with washi tape and painted the one on the left without adding white paint to the red and orange paints used. For the one on the right I added white to both the red and the orange increasing the amount of white to get the lighter colour at the bottom.

After some success with the warm toned panels I taped off a larger one and used blues and red to create a gradated purple sky. Although it is quite dark I did mix white paint with each of the colours used. ( I listed the paint colours used on the Foiled Fox post)

I started with a panel of hot pressed watercolour paper splattered with masking fluid. I painted some water across the panel where the horizon would be then sprinkled a little ost. red brusho above and blended it in with a paintbrush. Next I added grey brusho and blended that to fill the sky and finally some ost. blue brusho for some blue tones. I kept adding, blending and diluting until I was happy with the soft gradation of colour. While the sky was still damp I pressed just the small tree part of a landscape stamp out of the PB peaceful winter set repeatedly across the horizon inked with memento London fog ink.

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