Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze Concept Art
Retro Studios artist, Eric Kozlowsky, posted some concept art he created for Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze on his blog, The Land of Koz! Check out the concept art below with some descriptions of the art from Mr. Kozlowsky himself!
This is the first level I worked on solo, it was definitely a learning experience. The birch trees were an especially difficult piece to get right, but finally after working with our concept artist Toph Gorham we landed on something that worked. Toph and I also worked on the Brass instruments used throughout the level and I modeled and textured those. Again this level was pieced together by me, but a lot of the assets were created by other talented artists. Such as the awesome owl sculptures, the pine trees, and even the autumn canopy itself. The level creation pipeline at Retro Studios is very collaborative!
I didn’t actually make a level in world 4 but I did work on the template that all levels were based off of. I worked with concept artist Toph Gorham to come up with the look for the ancient civilization seen in the levels. These pieces were then used to great effect by other Retro artists to create some truly incredible levels! I was inspired by the look of ancient japanese jomon dolls for the textures and look of some of the statues.
This is the titular windmills of Windmill Hills. This is one of the first assets I worked on for the Second Island. Ted Anderson and I worked on a couple of designs that are also in the level. This particular windmill went through a few iterations. It was a pretty fun piece and again, served as the basis for a lot of the structures in the Second Islands library of assets.
This is one of my favorite levels that I worked on. It is a massive level and the first one of the Second Island. So first off it has a short intro which I got to come up with. Now this level was built using a lot of assets created by different artists. Things like Pines trees, and certain textures. The owl statues. But the level construction is all me. I also came up with the look for the windmills and the Swiss Chalet style houses. Initially the interior of the giant windmill was going to be a bunch of smaller windmills, but I really wanted to do a DK take on the old Castlevania style Clock tower levels. . Over all I think this level turned out great!
This is one of the very first assets I made for Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze. It became the basis for all of the structures in the Mangrove Island, I made the initial textures and then Ted Anderson went over and did a color pass on top of them.
I’m pretty happy with this piece and even though it is an early one and not fully featured in the game (you can see it in a few instances in Trunk Twister). I am happy its pieces got so much use throughout the game!
Kozlowsky also states that there is more to come so fans of Donkey Kong or the most recent Wii U title Tropical Freeze should keep an eye out on his blog for more concept art!
