The Magic: Legends team has announced that Tazeem, the jungle continent on the plane of Zendikar, will be the third region featured in the game.
The post focuses on the design of Tazeem and the challenges of making such a space look fantastic from virtually every angle and perspective. Tazeem is set to contain flowing rivers that the Merfolk call home, towering jungle treeline teeming with wildlife, and mystical hedrons both in the sky and scattered across the jungle floor.
To that end, the lighting is incredibly diverse and must show off each of these spaces accordingly. The team arrived at several lighting tricks to pull this off,
“The first solution is an old stage lighting trick called a gobo, where a stencil cut-out of a tree canopy is placed between the light and the stage. When light shines through and a gentle sway is added, the shadows feel like you are among the trees.”
The second solution was rather more straightforward and involved placing thin vines in vertical spaces to provide the illusion of height. The team also experimented using negative space to show off the vistas in Tazeem. They did this by introducing strong silhouettes which clearly stood out against the backdrops. And of course, the liberal use of color helped sell the lush environments.
You can check out the results of this work in various images over on the blog post here.
