This week, Drop Bear Bytes’ art team run you through the creation of a character - Sid Thompson, a wasteland scavenger and fuel merchant - from the earliest ideas through to placing him in game.

Step 1: Cassy Lee, Jr Concept Artist handles the first stage, once a character brief is provided by the narrative team.

“When tackling a new character design it usually begins with a kick off call with my art director to get a basic idea of the expectations involved. I then take some time to read through the brief to gain insight into the character’s backstory, his current role and purpose, and the overall look and feel of the character.

My role in this design process is primarily focused on creating outfit iterations, so I will make some specific notes for myself on the most important details that I need to include in his attire.

From here I go about gathering some reference and then I will draw up a basic pose for the character. In this case Sid is a middle aged man who is gaunt and sickly and the harsh life of a post apocalyptic world has taken its toll. Based on this I made a quick sketch of a slightly stooped figure that shows some aging.”

“The next step is to create the different outfit iterations.

I will create one iteration that hits the most important points. In Sid’s case, this is a long grey oil coat, a hat, smeary goggles and wellies. I then copy this iteration across, making small adjustments as I go to provide some variety in the design.

I try out different styles of goggles, change up the type of hat he’s wearing and play with the length of his coat and pocket details. I also spend some time on little details such as shifts in hue and saturation, and adding in little rips and tears to his clothing to show age and weathering.

The purpose of these concepts is not to make a pretty picture, but to quickly and clearly convey an idea, so I do not spend any time on rendering. I will however, add in some textured brush strokes here and there to indicate dirt and soiling.”

“Once an iteration of this outfit has been decided upon, it is now time to create the orthographics.

For this I create clean line drawings of each item from an orthographic perspective. When necessary I will do a turn around and cutaways to help make certain details clear for the 3D artist.”

“In this case, Sid’s Drizabone coat needed to be drawn from the front, side and back so all the details of the collar, pockets and layers of fabric can be understood from all angles.“

Step 2: Once these are done, Sid is off to Bianca Roux, our 3D Modeller.

“I start off by studying the concept art and go on a reference hunt. I was given a picture of an elderly gentleman that the art director liked the look of, I then reverse image searched his photo and found some more profiles and expressions of him. I needed to find a good reference for wellies, goggles, hats, dog tags and ripped clothing. It is important to reference from real life as the viewer’s eye will quickly pick up that something looks off. It is not referenced correctly as clothing and faces are something we see every day. Next, the iconic ozzy drizabone.

As a South African this isn’t something I am very familiar with. On my research hunt I actually discovered that drizabone originated from the phrase "dry as a bone"! This is super fitting as Sid is a scavenger and spends a lot of time outside, so the drizabone is perfect for this character. He may have radiation poisoning, but at least he’s warm and dry!”

“I then move over to zbrush where I begin with a base model of an old man that I sculpted prior so that I always have a starting point for an older male.”

“I then focus on his facial features and give Sid his grumpy and worn down features. Next, he gets his clothes and vanity items, and lastly his drizabone. I block-in rough shapes for the clothing and then start adding creases with one of my favourite brushes, Orb Cracks. I then proceed with the Orb Flatten Brush and hard polish brush to achieve the stylized, painterly effect we are going for.”

“Lastly I pop on some basic colours I was given in the concept and see that all is working well. The model then gets looked at by the art director, we discuss any changes and the model gets improved and polished.“

“And voila! My high-res sculpt is complete!”

“The next step is optimizing for game. Sid gets retopologized in maya and the high res detail is projected on through substance painter. I then hand over the low poly model, with Ambient Occlusion and Normal Maps, to the texture artist. I then wait in excitement to see Sid come to life in colour!”

Step 3: At this point, Sid is sent to Sara Laubscher, our 2D/3D Artist

“Sid is suffering from radiation poisoning, so I wanted to make his complexion look sickly and uneven.

His darkened eye sockets and blue splotchy face also gives the impression of a haggard and disheveled man.”

**Cold shadows and warm highlights with/without**

“The only reason that I can get away with such liberties is because of the extremely painterly style and stylized lighting. This just helps to enhance the form and show off those sculpted details that may get lost from a distance. The shadows and highlights also create a really nice grungy look which works well for our roguish character, Sid.”

“As you can see, even though this texture map is very simplistic, I make sure that separate materials have contrasting levels of roughness - the hat string stands out from the skin, the buttons stand out from the jacket and the jacket stands out from the shirt. This all helps to keep objects readable from a distance and creates visual interest through dynamism.

I kept the roughness maps very basic like this to keep it from looking too realistic and breaking the painterly style. The slight changes in roughness only help to distinguish materials and make the form ‘pop’.

White represents areas that are dull and the darker grey areas represent areas that are shiny/oily.”

“In the next point I will explain how we communicate changes in secularity and damage.”

“Made use of textural details such as rough splashes and loose painterly strokes to show details that would otherwise be indicated through a change in secularity or height.“

“This is the visual language we are using in the game as we wanted to make it feel like these characters are existing within a painted world, hence tattered fabric or dirt would be expressed as an artistic splash. This also helps with readability from a distance in the game’s isometric view.”

Step 4: Sid then goes to James Giles, our Rigger and Animator

“Using an add-on for Blender called Auto-Rig Pro, I can quickly generate a skeleton and assign parts of the 3D model to the bones.”

“For a humanoid like Sid, this provides an excellent starting point. It only requires an hour or two of polish to make sure that Sid and his clothes will deform correctly when he moves.”

“At this point, I can use this rig to create animations - even ones that other rigged characters will use!”

Step 5: Portrait

Our Art Director, Kerstin Evans, then creates a portrait for the grumpy old guy, and he’s ready to be placed in the scene and hooked up to the dialogue system in articy:draft (but that’s a topic for another blog!).

Step 6: Placing the character in a scene

And here we are with the end product: We meet Sid in Kokeby Waystation, getting some much-needed shade, and have just brought him some drinkable water: