The Boat was thought up pretty early on but only realised recently. The bartender and boat were envisioned to be a sort of passive NPC that would provide some unique and time-limited services for the player (multiple players initially) and would also act as a plot/tutorial dispenser.

We ended up using the boat and a non-aggressive Kokobo (coconut NPC) in the gameplay trailer to introduce the plot.

I sketched a really rough concept image to establish the main forms and materials of the craft.

I then started to pump out all the main forms and change a few pieces to better fit the concept I was imagining.

Once all the pieces were finalized and UVs were all packed appropriately, I moved into Substance Painter.

Once the boat was completely painted up, I exported all the materials and relating maps into our Unreal Project for assembly (into a Blueprint). Once I had everything in, I sought some feedback/testing, which revealed that the boat needed a few more pieces to add personality and some flavour to enhance the narrative.

I set out to make some stylized bunting, hanging herbs and some beach accessories to fit the vibe.

After some back and forth with colours- I settled on the overall design and the feedback was positive, so I implemented the changes in Unreal.

I'm really happy with how this turned out, and I learned a lot about how Substance works in the process,
I even got to try my hand at some basic blueprint code and managed to get the boat to follow a spline path around the island, gently easing in and out of a 'Pier'.