Zecha Tactics

Current weapon design from all angles!

The modeling turn out really well and we decide to give it some cel-shading texture.

Here's our new gun alongside the zecha for scale.

We're working on rigging up some shooting poses, so hope to share those soon!

Zecha Tactics is a mecha tactics RPG game coming to early access in 2021!

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Ever wonder how a 2D concept illustration ends up as a fully rendered 3D character in a game? It’s definitely a team effort involving several different artists. Let’s take a look at the whole process from start to finish!

Concept art

The process begins with a 2D illustrator producing concept art with an initial character design. Japanese artist Shinya Mizuno is our lead mecha designer, and was already well know for his own quirky mecha illustrations before he joined the development team on Zecha Tactics. For Zecha Tactics, the team gives Mizuno basic specifications for each type of mech needed in the game. Mizuno then uses his creativity and design skills to bring the mechs to life in his initial concept illustrations.

From Mizuno’s concepts to turnaround drawings

Once the team decides to include one of Mizuno’s concepts in the game, another illustrator on the team takes the concept drawing and starts working on turnaround sketches. While concept drawings focus on outlining the basic feeling of a character, turnaround images are more like technical blueprints to help a 3D artist translate the 2D concept into a 3D model. Concept art is often drawn from only one angle, but turnarounds are a series of front, side, and back images that give a 3D artist information from multiple angles to assist the modeling process.

The turnaround artist takes design cues from Mizuno’s initial concept art and extrapolates how the mecha would look from different perspectives. Creating the front view of the turnaround is usually the easiest, as that’s where most of the details have normally been addressed in the initial concept art. The process then moves to drawing the side and back views, where turnaround artists often have to come up with their own interpretations that match the concept illustration, sometime referencing Mizuno’s past work to capture the spirit of the initial design.

Difficulties can sometimes arise from blind spots in the initial concept drawing. For example, all of the internal joints have to be designed by turnaround artists. The joints aren’t visible in the concept, but are essential for creating a 3D model. Artists often refer to other references like old Gundam anime or plastic model kits. Designing each part one at a time, an artist might have to reference several difference sources to complete the turnarounds.

3D modeling

When the turnaround designs are finalized, they are handed off to a 3D artist. Using the turnarounds as a guide, the 3D artist first blocks out a rough 3D model to capture the basic proportions and look of the mech. After creating the basic blocking for the model, the 3D artist can then start to make adjustments and add details to get the look closer to the turnaround drawings.

This is often an iterative process as others on the team review the work in progress and give feedback. Even with the help of turnaround drawings, the 3D artist still has to make additional creative and technical decisions to bring the model to life.

Sometimes parts of the design that look good in 2D don’t look quite right in 3D, such as proportions or outline edges, and adjustments have to be made to the model. More complicated problems might arise with details like knee and wrist joints, which have to function realistically to support animation without clipping. It can take up to one month of work to finish a 3D model.

Texture mapping and shading

As work is finished up on the 3D model, another artist creates a texture map for the model. Also called a UV map, the map is a collection of 2D images that are projected onto the 3D model. These textures include things like color and simulated surface textures that can make parts of the mech look dull and rough or shiny and smooth.

A texture map for a single model is usually stored as a square image. The square is further divided into shapes that correspond to every surface on the model. When “wrapping” this texture map onto the 3D model, the rendering software references the coordinates for each surface area to ensure that the correct shape within the texture map is projected onto the corresponding surface of the 3D model.

As a final step in the modeling process, a technical artist develops shaders for the model. While the texture map creates the basic look of the model, a shader defines how the surface of model looks when light is projected onto it. Games like Zecha Tactics that aim to recreate the flat cel shaded look of anime in 3D require a lot of specialized work in developing shaders. In many ways, the reflection of light on a cel shaded model is not as straightforward as a model with more photorealistic lighting.

Finishing the model and ready for action!

After the development team is happy with the 3D model, the model is sent to the animation team for animation rigging. Rigging and animation is another team process that we hope to cover in a future post!

Thanks to everyone who voted on their favorite type of mech across the web!

Looks like most Zecha pilots want to come in heavy, but hopefully we're working on enough varieties to keep everyone happy!

We're working with our lead mecha designer, Shinya Mizuno, to design more mechs to fill out our roster!

What type of mech do you like playing with?

A) Balanced all-rounder

B) Heavy weapons, heavy armor

C) Light and speedy

The skeleton frame for our zecha - fully rendered and ready to animate!

No assembly or nippers required ... unfortunately!

For More on Zecha:

We're working on concept animations for in-game cinematics! Here's a melee attack!

How do you feel about cutscenes? Always watch or always skip?

Here’s our latest concept art by our lead mecha desinger, Shinya Mizuno!

It’s a light and speedy mech for scouting and sniping.

One shot, one kill!

What's your favorite sniper mech out there?

What's the best way to trek across the desert?

A camel? A jeep? Nope!

Just hop in a zecha unit, and run like the wind!

Here's a work-in-progress 3D render of the zecha carrier based on Mizuno's concept art!

What details would you add to the carrier for a final version?

Here's how the carriers look in its concept design phase by our lead mecha designer, Shinya Mizuno.

And this is how the carriers look in our final teaser trailer.

In Part One of this two-part interview,  we sit down with Richmond Lee, the Art Director for Zecha Tactics and CEO of Bit Egg Inc., to discuss the origins and art inspirations behind Zecha Tactics.

Part Two of the interview is also available here.

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and Bit Egg?

My name is Richmond Lee. I’m the co-founder of Bit Egg, as well as the CEO, and art director for various projects. I’ve been with the company since we were just three people. We’ve grown a lot in the last couple of years. In the beginning, we were making our own mobile games, but all of us were really into hardcore games like console and PC games.

When we started, we followed the generic advice to make something mainstream that would be a hit before you make what you really want to make. We learned a lot and made some casual games. We also made a lot of classic mistakes. We eventually found ourselves at a crossroads where we could keep going with Bit Egg or move on to something else.

We decided to keep going with indie game development while also pivoting to art outsourcing, which we are very good at. After Bit Egg pivoted, we started hiring more people and getting bigger and bigger outsourcing projects. We stuck to our guns and only took interesting game projects. We’ve worked on a lot of great projects and have learned so much from them.

A big turning point was working on Indivisible from Lab Zero. Their art team was great to work with, and Bit Egg did over 300 characters for that game. Our team kept growing from there. Having revenue from outsourcing lets us take bigger risks with our own games. Zecha Tactics is going to take a lot of resources to make, but it’s also the kind of game that we like, and I just feel ten times more confident making this kind of game.

With your experience at Bit Egg and as someone who hosts an entire podcast dedicated to celebrating art in video games on the Art Eater podcast, how has your interest in art shaped your approach to game development?

My background is in art. I’m definitely very art- and animation-focused, but obviously I also care about the gameplay. So for me as a game developer, not just as an art director, I think the art needs to support the gameplay and vice versa. It all needs to fit together. My favorite games tend to be very concise games, where all their elements fall into place well. The animation needs to serve the gameplay, but it also needs to feel good.

I also have a pretty decent following online now through Art Eater. I tweet a lot about interesting art in other games. I’ll get into stuff like Arc System Works and how they do 2D techniques in 3D. The really great thing about Zecha Tactics is that it’s finally an opportunity to take all the stuff I think is really cool in other people’s games and apply it to something I’m making myself.

What makes Zecha Tactics special? Why is it the first game Bit Egg decided to make?

It’s funny and a weird coincidence that so many indie developers here in Thailand make mecha games. I think it’s just part of the culture. I’ve always liked mecha stuff. Even when I talked to Boom, our lead modeler, he said, “I’m not that into mecha.” I asked him, “Yeah, but how many mecha anime series have you watched?” He listed five of them and several video games too. In America, you would be considered a mecha fan, but here in Thailand, you would consider yourself an average gamer.

As far as why we’re making a tactical strategy game, it’s a favorite kind of game for Stephen (Game Designer for Zecha Tactics). He’s designing the gameplay and it’s the kind of game he’s always wanted to make. When Bit Egg started, we were only making other games, but Stephen wanted to build up to making a tactical strategy game someday. So this is that day. For me, it’s also a chance to put into play a lot of things I think are aesthetically interesting. All that cool stuff I tweet about, I’m really excited to put that into our game.

Zecha Tactics is set in the brand new world of Aldsan-Od with original characters and storylines. What are the challenges that come with creating a new world?

That’s just it, right? Creating something from nothing is really difficult because it’s this big blank canvas. Even if it’s sci-fi mecha turn-based strategy, when it comes time to actually create the world and create the story, you need to focus it.

The most challenging thing for me was figuring out the values that would go into the game that would drive everything else. I don’t want to tell a story just for the sake of it. I don’t want to just have robots fighting for no reason. So we’ve actually been working on the game for a year, and the story has been a very slow brew.

We’ve been refining the gameplay steadily, but the story has been up and down. I’d say the most challenging part was just giving it enough time to figure out … a story that I really wanted to tell and what I ended up with just after the last year of development, talking to people, watching stuff, and looking at stuff.

The core theme we came up with was that it’s obviously an action adventure game, and there’s a power fantasy element, but I want to make it a power fantasy about helping people. So Zecha Tactics is a game where you know you’re powerful and you beat people up and you fight, but in doing that you have the chance to go through this virtual world and make it better.

What is the inspiration for Zecha Tactics in terms of its cel-shaded art style? It’s reminiscent of Arc Systems Works’ Guilty Gear titles. Is that an inspiration point as well?

Guilty Gear is a huge inspiration. I’ve always liked the fighting games from the beginning, and then they’ve really pioneered cel-shading in 3D. I love all animation. I like 3D. I like 2D. But I love drawings. I love 2D animation and it’s really amazing how the Guilty Gear games capture the appeal of 2D in 3D. We’ve learned a lot just from studying these games, so they were a huge inspiration.

Judging from the cinematic teaser trailer for the game, Zecha Tactics looks very much right out of 80s mecha anime popularized by series like Gundam. Were there any specific artistic inspirations? Yeah, a huge inspiration from all 80s and 90s anime! We were inspired by Guilty Gear’s technique and just how handcrafted everything is, but their aesthetic is much more modern and slick. In Zecha Tactics, we’re going for a little bit of an old-school feeling, a little bit more restrained.

Personally, I like mecha and I really like the grunt units. I like the Zaku more than the Gundam. I like the Scopedog in VOTOMS. A lot of fans noticed that Zecha Tactics is very VOTOMS, and that’s another huge inspiration. That’s a series about being the grunt, not like being the hero. The guy that just kind of squeaks by these battles.

A cool thing about developing a game is that we’re not limited to just one thing. We can have lots of different factions, and each faction can sort of explore a different style that we like. The starting faction is very VOTOMS-like. The designer we hired, Shinya Mizuno, I think we’ll talk about him more, but he has a very unique style. We’re definitely going to see more of his idiosyncratic style along with other factions. Naturally other people’s tastes who are working on the game will come through too, like our lead modeler really loves Megaman, so you’ll get a little bit of that flavor naturally too.

Check out Part Two, where Richmond goes into more detail on mecha design and the story and tone for Zecha Tactics!

Zecha might look bulky and huge, but that doesn't mean they aren't agile.

This one can even glide over the hills.

You won't see it coming!

What's your favorite wheeled mech?

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We're looking for new zecha pilots! Think you've got what it takes to join our crew?

Find out more and sign up for the Zecha Tactics newsletter: http://zechatactics.com/newsletter/

Zecha Tactics is a blend of Mecha tactics, story-driven RPG, and mercenary outfit management.

- Fast-paced turn-based tactical combat

- Expansive single-player campaign – explore the world map aboard your mecha carrier, chat with your crew, discover lost technologies, brawl in the arenas, ally with different factions, and uncover the conspiracy threatening Aldsan-Od.

- Convince your enemies to join your cause, and project your fighting power to control new territories.

- Upgrade and customize your mecha, carrier, and home base.

- Change the course of the world – every choice matters.

We're looking for new zecha pilots! Think you've got what it takes to join our crew?

Find out more and sign up for the Zecha Tactics newsletter: http://zechatactics.com/newsletter/​

 Zecha Tactics is a blend of Mecha tactics, story-driven RPG, and mercenary outfit management.

- Fast-paced turn-based tactical combat

- Expansive single-player campaign – explore the world map aboard your mecha carrier, chat with your crew, discover lost technologies, brawl in the arenas, ally with different factions, and uncover the conspiracy threatening Aldsan-Od.

- Convince your enemies to join your cause, and project your fighting power to control new territories.

- Upgrade and customize your mecha, carrier, and home base

- Change the course of the world – every choice matters.