Last week we showed some of the ways we get things done for Volatile. This week, we’re going to go into a little bit deeper and show how we go from concept to a complete asset, ready for the game.
In Volatile, there are a number of NPC’s (non-player characters) that the player interacts with to get missions, buy items or fight against. For this case, we needed a particularly unique NPC for the players in interact with in the middle of the game. This NPC is going to be giving the player a lot of key missions and providing some unique comedy relief. The idea for the character was pretty simple. We needed a robotic servant that the player could easily befriend. A robot. A butler. Mr.Botler was born.
Coming up with an idea for a character is the easiest part. Now we had to get him onto paper and flesh him out some more. What happens next is we have a brainstorm session for the character. Who is he? Where is he from? What does a robotic butler sound like? Even though you never hear Mr.Botler speak, in our heads we pictured him sounding a lot like Johnny 5 from Short Circuit. The more life you breathe into the characters, the better. An example I like to use is from the movie Collateral by Michael Mann. In the movie, there is a character named Vincent. Anyone who has seen the movie knows the character is unique, mysterious, and fun to watch. In the commentary for Collateral, Mann says he provided Tom Cruise (the actor portraying Vincent) with an amazing amount of backstory. Information like, where he grew up, the type of people his parents were, where he went to college and more. The audience is blind to this information in the movie, but it helps make the character come to life. It’s easier to picture the way they would act or look or feel in certain situations which in the end, makes it that much easier to bring them to life.
After a few brainstorming sessions and a lot of tea, we came up with the following concepts:
Some of them were okay, some were great but only one really stood out to me. Number 2. One of the few requirements for Mr.Botler was that his neck resembled a bow-tie and that he looked happy. Out of all of these, Number 2 worked the best. Number 1 was also considered, but after some initial testing, we found out it didn’t work so well with the way we were going to be displaying these portraits.
After we’ve found the one that we think is best, we elaborate on it and start the color stage. This is also one of the easiest parts. All of the values are already in the initial concept, now it’s just time to clean him up a bit slap that extra layer of paint on to get him looking right:
And there you have it! Rinse and repeat for every portrait and you’ve got yourself some work ahead! I hope you enjoyed this little look into our art process!
-Matt
