Hello! My name is Syd Simonis, and I am the Art Manager for Inconvenience Store. What this means for our team, is that I check up on all of our artists, provide feedback and critique, and make sure everyone is doing what we need to do to make a game! But with a team of 6 artists with different interests and skill sets, how do we make all of our assets look good together?
An example of an early character style guide that Jace created, exploring character color palettes and shapes.
The short answer? Lots of communication.
The long answer? We create a lot of rules to follow. These include style guides, references, and mood boards that we all refer back to. We also actively review, critique, and edit our designs to make sure that everything remains visually consistent.
An example of an early style reference sheet – the colors to the left were possible character colors and how they compared to the titular Happy Mart green vest.
One rule we agreed on is that most of our environment objects should have a low specularity – we didn’t want them to be very reflective, and instead have a rougher appearance. This is so we had less elements competing with the player’s avatar for attention.
Nothing can be shinier than the player!
Another rule that we create is not visible in the game – it’s a rule about how we organize our files. Ah, yes, the thrilling world of file management! It’s not as exciting as modeling fruits and vegetables or programming gameplay, but it’s still an important part of game development. This is so everyone knows where to find things, and everyone understands what everything is. One of these files is a base scene file that all of our artists use as a starting point for every model and asset. It contains a copy of our character, and a plain 1-meter cube. This way, all the assets remain proportionate to each other, and there are less changes that have to be made in engine.
Where it all begins – a blank slate for asset creation!
Thank you for supporting our team as we push through to complete Inconvenience Store, and we look forward to welcoming you to Happy Mart!