How do furniture get developed? (Example: Alinor and Vampire)

bluebird · July 2020

Erissime wrote: »

Uhm ... yeah . You clearly need to do a bit more research on real life medieval furniture - cause Alinor is far from ... fantasy. The only fantasy about it are the textures ( leafs and upholstery and elven/nature themes) - but ... that's all real life there, which - like I said - is where the inspiration comes from. By and by I was talking about the shapes ( the actual 3D item) - and not it's textures ( The way it is "dressed up" ) - and it was with that in mind that I invited you ( and anyone else interested) - to bring in new ideas , with a real touch, around the time frame ( again - as close as possible to medieval - as ... depicted in real life ). Baroque is a touch - but alinor furniture is far more real than the high elf one. Do not confuse the lore with the inspiration. Items we get are as close to reality as possible, precisely so that they can make a point in a fantasy world - you know, something we can recognise and understand beyond words and stories and what not.

As for the metal stuff ( which is ultimately what all the daedric theme is based on) - well... that is pure fantasy. And I haven't seen a daedra sleep nor care so much about their wardrobe... . The Vampires are a border thing between monster and elegant . They can go both ways heavily, and ... well ... it's practically in the player's hands how they see it. They just tried elegance first - cause ... monsters do not really care about homes and living nice (again my first example with the cave and last dinner)

So bottom line - you need to understand the roots of inspirations - which are pretty obvious in the creations and which come from real life half the time, then ask yourself logical questions like - what would a metal wardrobe be used to? (and I don't mean by you, yourself, but think wider, how are such beings associated with such furniture generally perceived) - then figure why we get some things more than others. Cause to me the answers are pretty ... obvious . Tis all.

You seem to be somewhat confused. Perhaps you did not read what I wrote, or perhaps you read 'Alinor' when I wrote 'High Elf.' When I talk about High Elf, I mean High Elf. When I talk about Alinor, I mean Alinor. If you had read the thread, you'd have seen that I'm well aware that Alinor (the main archy spiky furniture, not the marble or curved upholstered ones, obviously, I also make that distinction in my earlier posts) is strongly inspired by Gothic. Just like Vampire.

So you'll forgive me if I don't really see what the point of your comments is, when they don't seem to contribute much to the topic, nor address what others have written before.

(High Elf style for reference. Clearly not Alinor)

- Incidentally, the game has other metal Wardrobes and beds too, like Clockwork. Vampires use metals and spikes on their architecture and their lamps, and their fountains and such, and also on their experimentation tools that we see in Greymoor Keep so it would not be a far stretch to think than furnishings with metal elements would be a match.
- Many Alinor pieces are also Baroque (Mirrors, some Nightstands, etc) so your insistence that every style ingame should be matched to a medieval one is also unwarranted. Vampires in Graymoor are also far from Elegant, they are vicious monsters who have spiked bloodfountains (some of which we can also use as furniture, and which actually do fit with the spiky snarly vampire faces and metal spikes and dark stones of the Vampire architecture).
- So it is doubtful that 'elegant' is the brief they were going for when designing the Vampire style for ESO. Previous vampires such as Count Ravenwatch actually managed to decorate his house elegantly by using elegant other styles. And even if they did want to go for 'elegant', Gothic is far from the most elegant historical European style they could have used.

NotaDaedraWorshipper · July 2020

Tigerseye wrote: »

But, surely, Vampires would hate anything that looked like a wooden stake?

They wouldn't be likely to invoke one of the few things that could kill them, in their furnishing design, would they?

If they embraced wooden stakes, they might as well also have a light, bright, sunny home, with holy water fountains and crucifixes everywhere, and be done with it.

So, assuming they wouldn't want the Alinor spikes, as they are square in cross section, exactly like a wooden stake they could be impaled by, that would surely be another argument for the finely turned finials of the Vampiric, wouldn't it?

Or, ideally, for no spikes, at all...

They wouldn't care about stakes at all, since stakes is not a weapon against Elder Scrolls vampires.

Which brings me to the topic of this thread. Not only are these two very similar but I also consider the whole "Vampire" style weird and pointless in general. Why do they even have an unique style? They would likely just use the furniture from where they are from, which in this case would be Nord's.

katanagirl1 · July 2020

I see similarities in Alinor and Elsweyr furnishing design - the cupboards (the ones that hang on the wall) and writing desks especially are almost identical in shape but slightly different finishes and flourishes.

There is absolutely no reason that one of these cultures in the game would have influenced the other. I think the devs just saw a way to reuse art assets to save some work. I would imagine that is why there are also similarities in the Vampire style.

bluebird · July 2020

NotaDaedraWorshipper wrote: »

Tigerseye wrote: »

But, surely, Vampires would hate anything that looked like a wooden stake?

They wouldn't be likely to invoke one of the few things that could kill them, in their furnishing design, would they?

If they embraced wooden stakes, they might as well also have a light, bright, sunny home, with holy water fountains and crucifixes everywhere, and be done with it.

So, assuming they wouldn't want the Alinor spikes, as they are square in cross section, exactly like a wooden stake they could be impaled by, that would surely be another argument for the finely turned finials of the Vampiric, wouldn't it?

Or, ideally, for no spikes, at all...

Which brings me to the topic of this thread. Not only are these two very similar but I also consider the whole "Vampire" style weird and pointless in general. Why do they even have an unique style? They would likely just use the furniture from where they are from, which in this case would be Nord's.

Yes, that's a good point. Clan Ravenwatch for example use Breton furniture, both the churchy stone ones and the wood and the drapes pieces that we can get. The current 'Vampire' furniture seem more Breton or Nord too, being basic knotwork pieces, with the 'Vampiric' element only coming into play on the stone and metal Fountains and Lamps (and those themselves stand apart from the wood furniture).

katanagirl1 wrote: »

I think the devs just saw a way to reuse art assets to save some work. I would imagine that is why there are also similarities in the Vampire style.

Oh, I hadn't considered that!

I only thought about the design direction (e.g. 'Vampire needs to be Gothic', and thus they overlapped it with an already existing style on which they used Gothic elements), but perhaps there was indeed an element of re-usability and design corner-cutting involved. That would broaden the discussion of what goes into design decisions even further i.e. does 'how easy it is to repurpose/implement' play a role, when they determine what they want new furniture to look like? Hm, interesting!