She Sells Seal Souls by the Sea Shore

 Heya!

This week is a Fathomless week-where I am map designer, creature concept + creature design artist, as well as Art Director and Co-Producer, and co-lead researcher.

Fathomless is a game about horror, mermaids, Kaikōura, and environmental preservation + conservation. 

I spent this week wearing many hats.

I started with creating a simplified map of Kaikōura so that the narrative team could plot out certain points of interest for the game.

Kaikōura Map

I then designed the layout of the marine lab, a key location of Fathomless, using interviews with and sketches(1) by Sue Mannering, whose father, Ian Mannering, actually helped found the Edward Percival Marine Laboratory in Kaikōura. I used documents written by Jack Van Berkel (2), Ian Mannering's "Padawan," so to speak. I also found very helpful sketched layouts created by Gene Carl Feldman(2), at that time a researcher for the Smithsonian on the Giant Squid.

Using these anecdotes and points of reference, I created the following top-down layout for our environment artist, Yumi, to follow. I can't wait to see what she comes up with.

Edward Percival Marine Laboratory Layout for Fathomless

After I had finished slaving over layouts and map design and making sure the layout was sort of realistic (taking considerations like having the showers be on the same wall as the washing machine and sink in the laundry, because that's where the plumbing would be, and including a hazard shower in the classroom because OSHA still exists in our game universe), I pivoted to creature design.

My first draft was, personally, a bit of a "meh." I wasn't enthused by it, it felt basic and not very well thought out. Maybe I can iterate further on it and make it work, but for now it is on the cutting-room floor.

Fathomless Mermaid Concept 1

My second go at it was far more successful. It's still in development, but I can already feel repulsed by it in a great way.

This mermaid is an ambush hunter, with Orca-like social structures and intelligence. They are incredibly loyal to their family units, so when someone captures an adolescent member of the pod, the rest of the mermaids stay to try and look for them. This causes havoc on the local environment, and acts as the inciting incident for our game.

Fathomless Mermaid Concept 2

Unlike your classic mermaid, this one does not sit upon the rocks like a human would, with a bend where the hips and knees would bend. Instead, it uses its lower set of pectoral fins, inspired by the mudskipper and seals, to prop its torso up, bending the pelvis and thus the torso the opposite way. This way, the mermaid can retain its dorsal fins. This does have the caveat of limiting/removing the existence of what is called an anal fin and a ventral fin, which acts as a sort of keel to keep marine creatures balanced and help with direction (as well as balance), respectively. 

Instead, I have opted to give the mermaid two sets of pectoral fins, the two lower ones as previously mentioned, and the two more triangular ones above, a ridge of dorsal fins, an adipose fin, and a crescent shaped caudal fin for the tail. 

The upper pectoral fins are used for manoeuvring, steering, breaking, and also act as a balancer. Between the pectoral fins and the arms, they should be enough to keep it from rolling.

The dorsal fin acts as a sort of rudder, helping to steer the creature and helps make quick turns, and is key to cutting down on drag.

The same can be said about the adipose fin, which is lower on the spine to the dorsal fin.

The tail fin, which I designed to inspire imagery of the classic mermaid, but is closer in construction to a swordfish (due to it being vertically aligned instead of the classic scuba-flipper/whale horizontal alignment) is a crescent shaped caudal fin. This fin structure reduces a lot of drag, allowing for the mermaid to move incredibly quickly through the water, necessary for an ambush-style hunter. 

The plates of scales on the bottom of the tale are thick, allowing the mermaid to rest comfortably on the rocky shores of Kaikōura. 

I mimicked the patterns of sharks and orcas (pale underbelly, dark back) to provide a level of built-in camouflage.

I gave her 3 fingers and one thumb- all webbed, of course - because I wanted to maximise the amount of webbed surface area on her hands to help her movement capabilities.

As for her head- 

She has kelp/coral-like horns growing from her head, something I am hoping to iterate on further, to help her camouflage in what used to be a luscious marine environment prior to Kaikõura's 2018 earthquake, which uplifted nearly all of Kaikōura's reef.

Her mouth opens like a snake. Those lines stretching underneath her cheekbones? That's her maw. The corners of her mouth are where a human's ears would be. 

I plan to put her gills along the sides of her torso, under her breasts.

Yes, those are breasts. These mermaids are mammals.

A mammal, categorically, must have mammaries.

Anyhoo, lets close this one off. I helped design a new player character, who acts as essentially a sacrificial lamb at this current stage. Here's Graham, the towns only veterinarian, mentor to Ian Anderson, our main player character (inspired by Ian Mannering), husband and father. 

Fathomless Graham Whiteboard Sketch

I sketched him up on the whiteboard as my co-producer and narrative lead, Evan Wills, and I were brainstorming. He dies as an introduction to one of our game's key mechanics- when you die, you don't come back. You have to play as the next character, someone who doesn't have as much knowledge as the previous character, and now has to juggle the deceased's responsibilities as well as their own.

It's a hard game.

It's a horror game.

You will mess up.

You will get yourself and or someone else killed.

Anyways, I sent Graham off to Erin Lim, our Character Artist. I can't wait to see what she comes up with.

Thank you so much for reading, and I'll see ya in the next one!

1. 

S. Mannering's recollection of the EPML layout.

2. KAIKOURA AND THE EDWARD PERCIVAL FIELD STATION

3. https://seawifs.gsfc.nasa.gov/OCEAN_PLANET/HTML/squid_epfs.html