Portfolio - Nadine Harter

About the project

SILVATYA - Soul of the Wild is a 3D Action Role Playing Game which was produced by a team of various students from different study courses at the Media University Stuttgart from 2020 to 2022. In this game you play as Soraya as well as her brother Tarek while trying to find their way back together when being seperated due to the war between their Okari tribe and the Tymerer tribe.

With this project the aim was to imitate industry production standards by using the Game Engine Unreal Engine 4, by managing the project with SCRUM using the Atlassian Suite Jira and Confluence, establishing pipelines and roles, while working remote using Discord as communication tool due to COVID restrictions.

Besides the game we also created a digitally painted intro and cutscenes.

T A S K S

In this project, I was working as...

► art director for preproduction and polishing semester

► character designer and concept artist

► intro illustrator

► level setdresser

I designed the main characters Soraya, Tarek, Delian, Elia and Trobeck and painted eleven illustrations for the intro of the game. In the last semester I directed the art of the characters Delian and Elia, the city of the Tymerer tribe and the magic effects. For setdressing I designed the village of the Okari tribe.

On this page you will find finished keyvisuals and progress shots of character designs, the finished illustrations for the intro and ingame screenshots of the setdressing of the Okari village.

I N T R O

The game starts with a digitally painted intro the backstory of Soraya and Tarek:

The intro intruduces us to the conflict between the Okari and Tymerer tribe, a war that has been ongoing since hundreds of years. It then cuts to Wotan, the son of the Okari tribal leader Rodon, who gets infected with the deadly blood disease, a disease the magical forest has set free to defend itself from the destruction through the war between the human beings. When Wotan then returns to the tribe, Sorayas mother Lyra tries to heal him with her magic abilities. But her powers are too weak and the disease takes over her body. Soraya and Tarek witness her death at an age of nine, leaving them back with their father Ivar.

► art direction

► storyboard and screenwriting

► character design and illustration

S T O R Y

The Game itself is a narrative discovery and fighting game in which you play Soraya and Tarek, two siblings from the Okari tribe.

You start as Soraya fulfilling her daily tasks in the Okari village to get to know their culture while training your bow skills with Tarek. But when Tarek is kidnapped by the antagonistic Tymerer tribe on his first blood feud and your father Ivar comes home infected by the deadly blood disease, your task is to find Tarek in the deep forest of Silvatya. In the forest you will learn to fight animals and enemies and will train new magic spells with a druid living in the woods.

After this you play Tarek, who finds himself in a recruiting camp for the Tymerer. There he forms new friendships with Elia and learns about the culture of the Tymerer tribe. He also gets to know Delian, the leader of a feared rebellion, who hates Tarek for not being loyal to the forest tribes, but loyal to his new friends he found in the camp. In the camp you learn to fight with Tareks new sword abilities with his new companion Elia.

Some days after, Soraya finds the recruiting camp at night. There she finds out, that Tarek has left the camp to head forward to the city of the Tymerer in the mountains. She also gets to know Delian who tries to convince her to join the rebellion, but she denies. As Soraya gets to the city some days later, she quickly finds Tarek who is threatened by the rebellion. She manages to free him and wants to leave, but Tarek tells her that the rebellion plans to blow up the whole city.

As Tarek has found friends in the Tymerers he refuses to let them down and sends Soraya to ring the evacuation bell while he heads to the city wall to convince this commander Trobeck to open the gates to the city. On her mission, Soraya needs to sneak past tymerian soldiers and gets to know Tareks friend Elia in the bell tower. After figuring out that they both are close to Tarek, they ring the bell and manage to evacuate the city before it blows up.

In the end, Soraya and Tarek have learned that the Tymerer tribe is not as hostile as they were told as children. Together with Elia, their story is the beginning of bringing peace between the Okari and Tymerer tribe.

C H A R A C T E R D E S I G N

S O R A Y A

Character Design | Concept Art | Keyvisual Illustration | Model Sheets

Soraya is the main player character of SILVATYA. She is 18 years old and a member of the Okari tribe. She also is the older sister of Tarek and daughter to Ivar and Lyra.

Soraya has had a very strong bond to her mother Lyra. Unfortunately her mother died when Soraya was nine years old, when Lyra tried to heal the son of the tribal leader from the deadly blood disease with healing magic. Due to this incidence, Soraya grew fear of the use of magic, although Soraya is capable of it. Instead of focusing on her magical abilities, Soraya curiousely focuses on extending her mothers research on brewing herbal potions while training herself in archery and taking care of her family.

For Soraya, family is the most important aspect in her life. She is very caring and does everything for her family. Not so for the tribe. She refuses to submit to the tribal rules and traditions as they are very conservative and don't allow women to fight or to leave the village to go into the dangerous forest. Her rebellious behavior leads to frequent disputes between the tribe and her, but as Soraya is the only healer and the smartest head in this village, Soraya does not face severe consequences.

Nevertheless Soraya does not get along very well with tribal members with her liberal, rebellious, prideful. combative, stubborn mindset, so she often is on her own, mostly in nature researching herbs, brewing potions and training to fight with her brother Tarek.

Gesture Explorations to find the energy and main emotions of Soraya

Silhouette Explorations based on earlier thoughts about what Soraya would wear. When thinking about Sorayas pain about the loss of her mother while considering her urge to step into her footprints as a researcher, I decided to give her her mothers old clothes which would not fit her perfectly. As Soraya has to grow into her role as a healer, researcher and magician, her mothers clothes are still to large for her and need to be tightened with her belt and straps. Also, the dress is too long for her which results in worn off ends of the dress. Her mothers clothes are based on celtic gowns.

Value Explorations

Color Explorations. Despite the Okaris nature-bond which you could show in natural colours, I chose to go with more vibrant colours which complement each other (orange-blue) to create a greater point of interest in a very greenish brownish environment and to highlight Soraya to help her stand out from the background.

Model Sheet. Unfortunately I had to remove parts of the skirt due to technical restrictions in the game. Also, I changed the colour of her pants to something darker, as the missing parts of the dress resulted in the fact, that the lighter version of the pants kept distracting from Sorayas face.

T A R E K

Character Design | Concept Art | Keyvisual Illustration | Model Sheets

Tarek is the second player character of SILVATYA. He is the younger brother of Soraya and son to Ivar and Lyra. Tarek looks up to his father Ivar, although Ivar has closed himself to his children since the death of their mother Lyra. Instead of coping with grief, Ivar goes into the forest every day - hunting and fighting enemies.

As their father doesn't speak a lot to his children, Tarek tries to impress his father with his fighting abilities and strength and trains archery and sword fighting all day. His greatest goal is to convince his father to take him with him into the forest so he can learn more fighting techniques and create a stronger bond with his father. Although Tarek has great respect for his father, Tarek trains Soraya in archery against the will of his father, because Tarek knows Sorayas urge to explore the herbs in the forest on her own one day and he wants to keep her safe.

Tarek is a loyal person with a very strong sense of justice. As he isn't as good in words as Soraya, he uses his body strength to fight his battles. In comparison to Soraya, Tarek doesn't lose his temper very easily, but if he does, it isn't easy to stop his rage.

Nevertheless, Tarek is rather an agreeing, peace loving person who is loyal to those he loves and not necessarily to the tribe. Especially after losing his mother to the tribal leaders command to heal his son from the blood disease, despite Lyra knowing she would die if she tried to, he set himself more apart from the tribal community and swore loyalty to his loved ones. Still, he respects the tribe and follows their traditions, while he admires and looks up to his mothers strength, loyalty and courage.

As Tarek always tries to find solutions and something positive in hard times, Tarek is very popular in the Okari tribe. In comparison to Soraya, he loves community and has a lot of friends. When he is on his own, he loves carving wooden figures of animals he imagines from the tales about the forest his father tells his companions at home after a long hunting day.

Greatest strength: Loyalty, sense of justice, physical strength

Biggest flaw: People pleaser, harmony needy

Loves carving, fighting, community, admires Sorayas intelligence

Fears falling out of community and not to be able to be a great leader as his father.