The best ideas are simple, elegant, leaving people asking, ‘why didn’t anyone
think of that before?’ or, ‘I wish worked on that’. At the very least, we can
lay claim to the latter. It has been a privilege working on such an ingenious
idea with the certifiable Sandy Sammarco (and his criminal distribution of
chocolates) as lead designer; his special brand of humor exhibited in the game
was not creative design solutions but a mirror image of the madness within.
Lead Artist Brian Gillies’ requirements and brief required a novel approach,
so I adopted principles of three-dimensional Cubism/Art Deco, utilizing Sweeping
and Resolved Lines.
My comic book experience was very useful in the creation of characters, many
of which were created without briefing. Elias Barracuda is one example; the idea
is to characterize form, that is to say, you know what a character is and does
by looking at them.
As usual, the problem with art concepts for games is working within a
determined poly count. How one interprets a line or a curve in game determines
how true to the concept a model is, it requires a skilled 3D artist with a
perceptive and anticipatory eye. Matt Clark thinks he fits the bill and I must
reluctantly accept that he pulled it off somewhat miraculously. He even managed
to make a habit of it too. However, with original styling like this it is
difficult to see every angle, and even I couldn’t understand some of the nuances
and character of the compound curves in 3D space, so I decided to build a
sculpture out of clay.
Sculpting our agent template was a revelation and I subsequently improved the
design of all characters. In collaboration with Matt, we finally resolved all of
the unanswered questions and achieved clarity, meaning that Matt could no longer
rely on his now familiar repertoire of excuses.
With the environment made up of brushed steel and polished surfaces built by
Brian, James, and Anjali; texturing the characters had to be experimental. How
do you texture cloth and skin in a manner not unlike metal? Traditional
texturing methods would not be adequate. The geometry styling would not support
it visually. After a couple of weeks, I had developed a solution and template
with some help from Matt who had been busy trying to find the fastest and
easiest way to do his job.
I had carefully and painstakingly prescribed shadow and gradient
characteristics, which could be adapted by any artist with an understanding of
our rules. Matt however had a bright idea, which coincidentally reduced his
workload by 80%, using automated light maps (based on our parameters) from high
poly (tessellated) models. He subsequently built and textured a model a day by
the means of several plug-ins, scripts and devises, which I personally consider
shameful.
Sometimes, original solutions look odd to an onlooker, and a creative person
should be aware but not dissuaded by this fact; for if the viewer looks long
enough to acquire familiarization, the strange becomes the acquired.
Every character was designed with motion in mind therefore the full
realization of their visual attributes could not be fully appreciated until
animations were added.
It ‘s been great fun working on the project, even if I got stuck with “The
Matt Clark” in the process…. what do they say? No pain no Gain?
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