Meet Max!
If you've been paying close attention, you've probably seen Max before: he's been in the key art since we announced the game! 🔎
Max is one of the main characters in Usual June, and he's besties with June and Sunny. You'll get to know him really well in your adventures!
We thought you might like to hear a bit about how we've gone about creating him, so we asked Laura Beach, 3D Character Artist, and David Pinckney, Lead Writer, to talk about their work developing the Usual June character with the biggest delts (this might not be true, but please don't tell him that).
Designing Max
Laura Beach, 3D Character Artist
In the concepts, Max comes across as a friendly, slightly goofy looking beefcake. I felt he needed to look strong, but not like someone who spends all their time in the gym. The concepts showed him with a bit of a gut which, I think, adds more interest to his otherwise muscular frame. He’s very broad shouldered and has chunky limbs and large hands and feet, probably more so than any other character in game.
Concept art of Max by Amelia Herman
He’s got very simple clothing without sleeves or long pant legs, so there wasn’t much room for being able to add the stylized clothing folds that a lot of the other characters have. But, for the vest top, I tried to think of areas where I might be able to add some complexity. With his large belly, his top would be tight across that area, and where the peak of the back starts to transition to the small of the back, the fabric would drape, so there’s the opportunity for adding some folds. I tend to use real world reference for this and concentrate on the logic of the folds before the stylization. Then I try to sharpen up the edges and simplify.
I’ve particularly enjoyed making the various items of footwear in the game, and I do tend to spend a decent amount of time working on these models despite the feet being the furthest away from the camera. There’s just so much variation to be made in a pair of trainers! I really like how Max’s trainers in turned out, particularly the part intended to look like mesh along the toe area.
We’re using alpha cards on our alive characters, so that means a texture where every strand is white (opaque) and every gap between the strands is black (transparent). They’re placed on flat planes which, in isolation, would look completely flat and sparse and would show the scalp underneath. So in order to build up the look of hair you need to add many planes on top of one another, building up both the 3D form of a section of hair but also the depth of layered hair strands. Layering transparency in a game engine is pretty costly, so you need to strike a balance between enough layers to look convincing without being wasteful. To help with being more efficient (and to move a little more toward stylized than realistic), I made the individual strands of hair thick and square in the texture.
Max will never be seen without his hat, and so when building the hair, the hat had to be in place first so that I wasn’t wasting polygons placing hair in areas it would never be seen. But placing hair that looks like it’s being flattened down underneath a cap and flowing out thickly from underneath is challenging because it’s not really hair—it’s planes—and those planes need to be angled to create 3D volume and if they intersect through one another or stick out through the cap it looks bad!
The fringe, (or bangs for you Americans) were particularly challenging, as the gap above the strap in his hat where hair would show through is a very small area but it needed to look like there’s a head of hair behind it. Placing hair into this gap so that you see no empty areas when you look at it from more extreme angles, no cards intersect other cards and nothing sticks out through the geometry of the cap but also having that characteristic curve like hair does when bumping out into a gap took some time to get right. But I think the final result was pretty successful.
Building Max’s Character
David Pinckney, Lead Writer
Developing Max was an interesting puzzle to sort out in terms of how he relates to the story and the rest of June’s core group. When thinking through what was needed in order to support the overall story, I recognized pretty early on that what makes June special and what the city means to others were pretty critical to showcase. This gave me some direction for Max and how he could fit in. What was settled on was, if June is Fen Harbor born and raised then Max, on the other hand, may benefit from having recently moved to Fen Harbor. June is made up of everything that Fen Harbor has to offer and has lived in the city her whole life, which is in contrast to Max who had to find his love for the city and allow that to change him. This contrast really helps highlight aspects of June’s own personality and aspects of the city itself by showing how Max responds to and changes because of them both. This, in turn, helps support the story and themes throughout the game.
Figuring out how he relates to the world around him made it easier for me to recognize the approach I wanted to take when writing him. In short, he’s kind of the opposite of June in a lot of ways, so he’s written to be a bit more of a counter-balance to June. June leads with empathy and emotion while Max is very metered and process oriented. Naturally, this can lead to some tension at times! Who they are as friends is just as important to the story as who they are individually, so being able to showcase the ups and downs of this friendship helped bring out who Max and the rest of characters really are.
Being just the counter-balance to June wouldn’t make him very interesting, so I needed something to give him more dimension. This comes through by showing things that make him more similar to June and the others. He can have fun, he can crack a joke, he can be empathetic, he has hopes and dreams, and he even has some regrets. Max will show throughout the game he is more than just “the guy with the plan”. Who he was before he moved to Fen Harbor also helps round him out by letting us lean on his past experiences and showing how those experiences shaped him before he found his way to the city and eventually to June.
I’m excited for everyone to meet Max! For me, he may have been the most difficult of the group to get just right and to find his voice, but I think he’ll come across as a relatable character that players will enjoy to learn more about as they progress through the story.
What are you most excited to see in Usual June? 👀 Let us know in the Finji Discord and we just might do an Dev Update on it!
And don't forget to add Usual June to your Steam wishlist!
By the way, did you see the news that we'll be at Indie Arena Booth at Gamescom, and we're bringing a brand new Usual June demo with us?
Meet new characters (alive & dead), learn more about the game's story, fight some monsters in a never-before-seen dungeon, and more!
Not heading to Gamescom? No fear! You'll be able to play the demo on Steam. Tell your friends to keep any eye out for it!
