Hi all,
this week we are going showcase one of the playable characters in Bosonauts, our next game:
This is the result of the hard work of the awesome artists team at jemchicomac. In a serie of posts, we are going to describe the whole creative process behind different aspects of the game visuals and characters.
The brief
We tried to bring something futuristic but at the same time keeping a touch of classic a adventurer on the main playable characters.
Bosonauts are time travellers that obtain gold across the time and space. Using their time machine, they will visit certain space/time spots with huge amounts of gold. Hence, Bosonauts style might be suitable for different ages of time, like mid-age, prehistory or weird planets in remote galaxies somewhere in future.
At the same time, they might be credible time travelers and the outfit should look strong enough for this kind of trips.
Last, style should be cartoonish accordingly to the game experience we are planning to deliver
The first character
With all this in mind, we got through a number of concept art iterations finding the exact tone for the characters, starting with our first male player. This is the result of the first attempt:
This was a really good start, but the result was a little bit too Victorian-ish. The other alternatives had great ideas that we wanted to kept in the next iteration. Things like the glasses and the early 20th-century adventurer touches was named as a must. In addition, we decided to go for a younger, more cute character:
Bum! The leather jacket was something really great, but with a real challenge…the integration with a futuristic, time traveller suit. We made a number of iterations, trying to find the right balance between the different elements. Concept and 3d artists worked together discussing on things like the body proportions and the size of the boots and the belt, a key question for the later rigging, skinning and animation process:
Final touches was discussed directly in high-poly, 3D version of the main character, including final shape of the face and haircut, the belt, the globes :
Conclusion
Working for the first time as a team on a 3d game and assets is challenging. The most important outcome is that 2d/concept artists needs a deep experience on providing guidance for the creation of 3d assets. Things that works great in a 2d concept could be difficult to deliver in 3d or just will never work. Even more when you are trying to build something cartoon-ish, there is quite difficult finding the right tone and bring the character into live, avoiding ridiculous eye expressions or a cold, lifeless character. Or even worst an under-professional finishing despite the hard work.
Our suggestion would be on these cases try to keep close to some standards in 3d for eyes, skin, proportions and then build your story and character personality on top. Once you get into something, you can iterate and bring something 100% unique.
In incoming posts, we will discuss specifics on 3D and the integration of these assets into Unity, new characters and the game backgrounds creative process.
Do not hesitate join us in the design of our game with your comments and suggestion. We will listen to everybody and consider your contribution in our design process.
Ah…one last thing. Join to our newsletter to receive news, comments and special offers from jemchicomac here:
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