Interview with Florian Coudray, concept artist on Haven

Hello everyone,

We received a lot of positive feedback about the creatures of Haven and Source bestiary, how you enjoyed their design, their presence by the two lovers’ side, and to pet them too! To give you a bit more context on the work behind the bestiary, we have decided to share with you an interview with Florian Coudray, concept artist on the game, who created most of the creatures on planet Source. Learn more about his work below.

Can you tell us more about you and your work on Haven?
Hi I’m Florian, I’ve been a freelance concept artist since 2017 and Haven was actually one of my first missions. This was an absolute treat to be able to work on such diverse topics and having a lot of freedom on concepts. I designed a lot of vehicles and creatures for the game. The scope of the game was pretty different back then and a good part of my work was also to design environments, vegetation and flavorful places.

How did you come to join the team working on Haven?
After participating in a community art challenge on Artstation I was contacted by Emeric Thoa who I guess appreciated what he saw and we came to chat and meet along with Audrey Leprince to discuss the game, the overall intention and start our collaboration.

What was the workflow for you, creating concept arts for the environments, fauna and flora for the world of Source?
I used softwares like Photoshop to paint rough ideas, sometimes I use photographs and bash them together to get a strong basis. I was always looking for some sort of story telling when designing places, in order to give some consistency and hopefully inspire the team with narrative ideas. There were a lot of discussions with Emeric and Audrey about narrative intentions, colours and overall mood of the game. They were always feeding me with cool ideas and this helped a ton get the concepts going.

You designed most of the creatures of the game. Oink is a big favourite but they are all amazing. Where did ideas come from? 
For Creatures I was inspired by creature design from Star Wars, and particularly the work of Terryl Whitlatch. I love the idea of injecting some earth-like elements in the creatures while always having some sort of quirkiness in them. I’m kinda fascinated by salamanders and the range of textures and colours we can find in them. Oink was one of many critters at first. In the end It’s the design team who made him into the lovely creature you want to befriend.

What was the more challenging part of designing creatures for Haven? What did you learn? 
Finding a fun interesting twist for each creature was I think the most challenging part. Also thinking about the overall ecosystem and potential interactions between them : predators, herbivorous or egg snatchers.

Creating the world of Source and of the Apiary, how did you find the balance between realistic enough to be relatable, but still from another planet?
Colours mainly I would say help a ton with creating otherworldly places. Playing with known assets from our world and altering their colours always gives a weird sensation. And of course implementing alien shapes and structures into the world helps a lot.

What is your favourite creature and why? (By the way you can participate in our twitter contest for “Best creature of Haven” here!)
Sunatcha (the egg snatcher) is my favourite. I honestly had a ton of fun when creating this one. A lot of creatures from Haven are very majestuous and this dude is just a sneaky thief with a ridiculous face.

Any last word for Haven players?
I hope you have a ton of fun wandering around the awesome fields on Haven and come to appreciate all the love put into this game by the team! I’m really glad to have participated in the creation of this awesome universe.

Florian Links: Artstation / Twitter