How to create a frozen world on the 360, the art director from Lost Planet speaks

Over on Capcom’s Lost Planet blog they have an interview with director Kenji Oguro, and art director Takahiro Kawano about creating the world of Lost Planet. Oguro wanted the world “feel cold and frozen down to the air”. Kawano was able to achieve this by making “a world of white and blue, high contrast between light and shadow, scenery fading into white from the thick fog.” Something else striking about Lost Planet besides the artic world is the enemy design. The insect-like Akrid were designed with exoskeletons to give the developers more freedom on how they could react. Kawano explains, “If you have a creature with a hard shell, you can make it so that you can shoot its leg off, or break the shell with an explosion. If you can make chunks fly, you can have a lot more variety in the kinds of reactions the creatures exhibit, and all that goes to make the player more satisfied with each kill.” Before the decision was made on having only insect based Akrid Kawano worked on lizard-like Akrid and even flying Akrid that were cut from the final game. See some more pieces of Lost Planet concept art past the break.