Developing Character @ Jumpship
Hi guys, Chris Olsen, project Director on Somerville. I thought I’d drop a little bit more info about the inner workings, so I thought no better a start than character. It was always my intention that character performance be a pillar of the game no matter the camera distance and for this as a baseline we needed readable silhouettes.Â
Some great early concepts from Gareth Davies. Carving out as much negative space as possible coupled with costume accents for joints to bring out readable body dynamics.
When I first started this project years ago Eric Chahi/Delphine Software’s “Another World” and “Flashback” represented the perfect character reference for me.
Readable, minimal. I could spot those sprites 20ft from my screen. However as we progressed and my need to get the camera in close, grew - We knew we had to address our characters faces.
Our rigging/modelling/assets aficionado Mads took to iterating our models. Tackling the challenge of appeal when the character isn’t a million miles away from the screen.Â
Damon, our principle animator was in charge of establishing a core personality and anim style. Mads built some handy features into the rig, including smear frame controls to distort our models.
Then I get to take all this lovely work and bring it into Unity to play with physics props, lighting and shaders.
We still have a ways to go on our cast but it’s in the right direction now and all those fancy things I briefed the crew we “needed” are now standard features.
Thank you for your time :)
