The stunningly realised period locations of The Queen’s Gambit represent a significant part of what made the show so special. In this ArtStation deep dive, we reveal how our Rockwater Art Team brought them to mobile in The Queen’s Gambit Chess.  

Spanning a plethora of interesting settings, from grungy janitor basements and pristine 60s homes to flashy Vegas hotels and grand Moscow halls, The Queen’s Gambit’s environments were a real joy for our art team to recreate. 

This week, we’ll be giving you an ArtStation-exclusive overview of these memorable locations as well as a look into some of the unique challenges that were presented by them as we adapted them for our mobile game.

Making a Faithful Adaptation

With the show rightfully being adored so widely, we knew that faithfully recreating the locations for the game was critical. At the same time, we had to take into account the fact that our game’s environments had to be able to run smoothly on both high-end hardware and budget smartphones. 

So, where do you start? 

The key for us was having a great partner. Netflix went to great lengths to ensure that masses of behind-the-scenes and continuity photography were available to our team, along with a whole heap of insight into the creation of these locations. 

At the beginning of the project and then throughout, our teams immersed themselves in every detail! An example of the lengths we went to comes in the fact that every chess clock from each location in the show was fully recreated for the game. They also function in exactly the same way as their on-screen counterparts. Timers will switch as players take turns, and keen-eyed players will even notice the flag falling if your timer runs out. 

Silver Screen to Mobile: Finding Our Art Style

For our initial pitch, we created an incredibly detailed render that we placed side-by-side with shots from the show. While this was accurate, it immediately became clear that the lighter tone of the game and its target platforms would require us to go on a journey of discovery to find a unique art style.

Similar to the way in which we approached adapting characters, in the initial stages we openly explored several directions, always making decisions together as a team to keep consistency between iterations. 

With the bright and inviting character direction already established, we eventually decided to adapt our environments and lighting to reflect this. We ramped up the saturation and, in many cases, the contrast was increased to provide more punch and legibility on smaller mobile screens.

The one area which broke this new rule was the ‘gameplay lighting’; the lighting of the 2D and 3D chess boards and their immediate surroundings. For these cases, we kept contrast at a low level to promote maximum readability of the state of play. After all, if you can’t clearly read the board from all angles, you haven’t got a good chess game!

Bringing Console-Quality Visuals to Mobile

The biggest challenge for us was keeping the visual fidelity up while developing for a vast array of different mobile hardware. To achieve this, we kept close control of detail based on player sight lines and radially out from the playable locations. The same was true of materials.

When it came to lighting, the backgrounds were baked with real-time lighting reserved for those showstopping key gameplay areas. 

Through our background in chess games, we also learned that experienced chess players prefer a 2D view, so all locations had to accommodate both a 2D and a 3D chess board, with the player having the option to switch between them on the fly.

We didn’t want to have our 2D boards as a generic, static top-down view. We felt it would really break the immersion of the setting but also would not be in keeping with the overall aesthetic of the show.

Instead, we created bespoke options that exist within each environment. From the weathered chalkboard found in Mr. Shaibel’s basement to the glitzy illuminated wallboard found in Vegas, even hardcore chess players can play with their preferred view without ever being taken out of The Queen’s Gambit’s aesthetically beautiful and fully-realised world.

It also led to us finding creative ways to add additional elements and easter eggs for fans, such as this chess magazine featuring Benny sitting on the table in Alma’s house.

Accommodating Beth’s Vision!

Those who have watched the show will be aware of Beth’s iconic superpower of visualising potential chess moves on the ceiling. In The Queen’s Gambit Chess, players can feel this superpower for themselves, we call this ‘Beth’s Vision’. 

All environments had to support the use of this feature! But it’s surprisingly tricky technically to replicate an entire functional board on the ceiling of an environment. 

With the help of our incredible tech team, we accomplished this by creating an entirely separate area within the scene complete with a variant lighting rig. This was then flipped vertically and set up to run our chess engine, and finally flipped back again in the code so that the view the user sees appears to be the ceiling. 

In the game, when you use this ability you are actually seeing our chess engine evaluating hundreds of potential moves in real-time and displaying some of the most likely choices before giving the user the best move it can calculate! 

Up Next on Ripstone ArtStation!

Thanks for stopping by our overview of the environments of The Queen’s Gambit Chess, we really hope you enjoyed it! In the coming weeks, we’ll be diving deeper into some environments individually. 

Next week, we’ll be chatting with Dan Eder, the accomplished Lead Character Artist whose Beth Harmon design inspired us! 

The Queen’s Gambit is a show known for its cast of iconic, memorable characters, each with their own equally iconic look. In the first in a series of ArtStation deep dives, we reveal how our Rockwater Art Team adapted them for The Queen’s Gambit Chess.  

From the endlessly enthralling Beth Harmon and her mentor Mr Shaibel to the charismatic Benny Watts and the intimidating Vasili Borgov, it is these characters that form the focus of our first in-depth article revealing how key parts of the game were developed.

Defining Character Art Style

At the beginning of the project, it became immediately apparent to us that we had to find a way to create an art style that managed to remain true to the much-loved hit show, but also felt appropriate for the lighter tone of our mobile game.

The key to this was Beth Harmon.

In the show, Beth is a multi-faceted personality whose softer side shines through in the quiet, intimate moments she shares with friends such as Jolene. We decided that finding a way to capture this side of Beth was a great place for us to start.

In The Queen’s Gambit Chess, Beth takes on the role of mentor and companion on the player's own journey from Novice to Borgov-smashing chess master! 

Knowing this, we made a conscious effort to her character’s design as approachable and welcoming as possible all while remaining true to her silver-screen counterpart.

In addition to ensuring our designs remained true to the show, our art team also had to take the limitations of the mobile platform into consideration and ensure that our character designs were effective on both high-end hardware and budget smartphones.

Let's dig into a bit more detail!

Rockwater's Character Design Process

At Rockwater, we began by creating what our teammates affectionately dubbed our ‘Wall of Beths’. 

This vast collage took up a 10x10ft wall in the art department and featured dozens of pieces of art and press photos of the show’s protagonist. We were careful to include a wide variety of options, of varying degrees of approachability and realism.

It took little time for us to refine this huge wall down into a smaller area with a reduced range of styles. This quickly aligned us all on where we felt the character style ‘belonged’.

Then came the tricky bit! We started a very painstaking process of narrowing down to an even smaller line-up of options that could all feasibly fit the tone of the game that we had in mind.

During this process, you might find one super specific element that you admire from one style but not another. This phase is all about combining them in different ways and iterating till you find the best mix.

It’s tough picking your next move, but don’t be disheartened. The more difficult it gets, the closer you are to finding the perfect fit!

Collaborating with Dan Eder

Of the countless iterations on our 'Wall of Beths', we kept coming back to a piece of impressive 3D concept art from Dan Eder; an acclaimed character artist whose work you can find here on ArtStation.

Naturally, we got in touch to collaborate with Dan, the original artist whose exceptional art had turned so many heads. His design quickly became a firm favourite and, once we'd shared it amongst the team, everyone at Rockwater and Netflix rallied behind this choice.

Rockwater's art department has a passion for working to raise the bar of what it can achieve, but never at the expense of other artists and their artwork. We feel very strongly that all artists in the industry should be recognised for their talent and passion. They should never be plagiarised or shut down. 

We'll be covering the ins and outs of our collaboration with Dan in an interview in the coming weeks!

Refining Our Character Designs

We'd arrived at a style we were all excited by! We referred to this style as ‘Open Face’.

Through team discussion and input from Dan Eder on his stylistic inspirations, we settled on the distinguishing features of this style.

A 'The Queen's Gambit Chess' Character should... 

• Be lightly caricatured but not overly distorted from reality
• Feature soft planarization of the hair and facial features but with no harsh creasing 
• Have reduced facial complexity to promote readability
• Make use of soft shading of the skin

With this set of 'rules', our team now had a style that we could express and apply to different characters. However, there were still a lot of variables that could lead to unique styles and inconsistencies within this range.

It was at this point, that we collaborated closely with Netflix on several rounds of consumer testing to get the Audience's views on what was most appropriate for the tone of the game. As creatives, it's important to always remember that we aren’t simply making games for ourselves. There is always massive value in checking your feelings to see if they align, not only with your teammates but with the people who will actually be playing the game.

We also considered a huge amount of data from The Queen's Gambit fans, hardcore chess players, gamers, non-gamers etc. 

Data like this can’t drive creativity, but it can prevent you from getting stuck down creative cul-de-sacs. 

Netflix and their consumer insights really delivered here. They came back with two clear front runners. One of which was our favourite, inspired by Dan Eder's initial designs!

Bringing A Cast of Characters to Life

Although Beth is, quite literally, the poster character for The Queen's Gambit we put just as much effort into assembling a fully-realised cast of other opponents from the show, all of which bring their unique character to the game. 

From their animated physical models and emotional reactions to the impressive skills they display on the chessboard, we applied everything we learned through the collaborative process of creating Beth. 

We couldn't resist capturing more of the incredible costume design of the show, so you'll find some iconic variants of Beth representing the many stages of her journey.

Up Next on Ripstone's ArtStation!

We hope you’ve enjoyed your introduction to the character design of The Queen's Gambit Chess and your first taste of the Ripstone ArtStation blog.

We have only scratched the surface! Stay tuned for our upcoming deep dives into specific characters and insightful interviews with key players such as Character Artist Dan Eder. 

Next week, we'll be starting a journey into the incredible world of The Queen's Gambit, with an overview article on the environments of The Queen's Gambit Chess.