If you’ve read anything about OFF GRID
or played the demo, you will have picked up that our hero, Joe, is a
technophobe dad who relies heavily on his hackivist daughter, Jen, for
everything: to get his phone to work, keep the smart fridge firmware up
to date, and make sure the IoT toaster doesn’t get any funny ideas.
Our
last update showed some of the early art tests we did, and explained
that we landed on following a low poly art style pretty quickly.
Environments in this style are somewhat straightforward - you can make
some really interesting scenes quite quickly. Even ‘programmer art’
doesn't look bad in a low poly environment, which is one of the reasons
we went for it! But when it comes to characters, it takes something a
bit more special.
We started by mocking up a very basic low poly
character so that we could get straight into prototyping movement and
mechanics. We didn't really have a story or background for him at that
point, we just knew that we wanted the character to be a bit of a
luddite and incredibly dull - the very opposite of the superhuman, infallible secret agents of most games.
Our initial model was made as a placeholder and he was seriously vanilla:
The very first Joe - a placeholder!
We quickly pushed it on by defining the ‘shapes’ of character that
could be used to portray different attitudes. As you can see in the
bottom half of the sketch below, we felt that rectangular characters,
and especially ones with a lean to them, a bit like a parallelogram,
provided a nice dynamic. Over time, this lean also seem to fit the
notion that our lead character is ‘forced into situations’ unwillingly.
Shape studies during Off Grid character development.
There is some interesting theory around shapes and personality
floating about on the internet, but essentially, the shape of a
character will often convey their attitude.
Pixar are a great exponent of this, and a good example is Carl from UP.
He’s a grounded and steadfast character who is immovable and difficult
- until he is changed by another character with the ability to always
bounce back and right themselves, even if a little naive:
Character shapes from Pixar's UP.
...and so we starting experimenting along these lines. Sazacat,
our character artist, started speed painting some thoughts on how we
might make some extremely normal-looking folks in game.
Early OFF GRID character concepts.
Reaching the concept below really defined how we wanted the characters faces to convey emotion in OFF GRID.
A defining concept for OFF GRID hero character, Joe.
We then progressed to the more twisted / awkward style that all OFF GRID character bodies (especially the knees and hands) carry:
The Joe concept art that truly began to define OFF GRID's character style.
That style was largely brought about with the drawing above, which
very quickly translated into a model for our player character, Joe:
The 3D model for Joe that brought together all the early concepting work.
You can see the kink in the knees, and the slightly crooked fingers, as well as the uncomfortable stance (even in A-pose!).
We
also defined our style with the use of specific hard and soft edges all
over the character, but most prominently around the jaw and forehead.
The final iteration of the OFF GRID hero, Joe!
These couple of major points have set the style for the rest of the characters in the game.
We hope this provides a little insight into the process. Don't forget, if you like this sort of thing, you can get your very own copy of the 'Making Of Off Grid' book by backing at the NAMESPACE level or above!
We look forward to showing you more soon!
THANK YOU!
The Off Grid Team
P.S. Please continue to share the campaign as far and wide as you can. Every single $ or £ backing is so important to us!
If you haven’t already - be sure to wishlist Off Grid on Steam - each wishlist makes a big difference to us, and we really appreciate your support!
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