OFF GRID is 73% funded! Thank you everyone!
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:
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.
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:
...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.
Reaching the concept below really defined how we wanted the characters faces to convey emotion in OFF GRID.
We then progressed to the more twisted / awkward style that all OFF GRID character bodies (especially the knees and hands) carry:
That style was largely brought about with the drawing above, which very quickly translated into a model for our player character, Joe:
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.
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!