Costume in Games: Integrating a Costume Designer into the Character Pipeline

[Music] i'm haley saloma i'm a costume designer and i'm here to talk about how i was integrated into the character pipeline of remedy entertainment's control before i start remember to turn off your noisemakers and remember to fill out the evaluation form after the session control is chessy faden's story it takes place in the headquarters of the federal bureau of control where chessy uncovers the answers she seeks as she grows in the role of the director remedy is known for narrative driven cinematic single-player action games that have a strong lead character this presentation is based on my work as a costume artist on control which will be released this year before control i had worked on costumes for live arts such as dance circus and

theater and digital costumes in animation and vr in 2016 i wanted to write my master's thesis about costumes in games and asked remedy if i could come work for them to see how they do things and if i would be of any help in the character process i ended up working on the costumes of control for two years and wrote the thesis about this collaboration the main finding in the thesis was that the people who design characters appearance for games and the people who design costumes for life arts have the same job both professions create characters from the inside of the story and concentrate on expressing the character's age background social status and the time period environment and climate through appearance costume is often confused with fashion fashion designers design clothes for general public and concentrate on the

aesthetics features of clothing costume design is character specific and concentrate on the narrative features of clothing it includes not only what the character is wearing and why but also how the garment is worn and how the character's previous actions events in the story or passing time have affected the quality and condition of the clothing costume designers also define how the characters have their hair and if they have physical characteristics such as tattoos or scars this job description also apply unrealistic character design despite the form of the visual narrative the character's appearance communicate information about the world where the narrative takes place the main difference in designing the costumes for games or live arts is that the costume design is mostly connected to the physical human body

in live arts the restrictions of costume design are connected to the reality and physical laws while costuming games is restricted by the technology the thesis and this presentation concentrate on games that are based on human characters and are either realistic or represent stylized realism since most of my work on control was about adding realism through the costumes this talk refers to my experience in making games at remedy as a costume artist and the utilized methods are considered through the character pipeline of remedy and apply primarily on the remedy's character process during this session i'll talk about how learning the similarities and differences of the costume production between game and film industry helped me to integrate into the process the character process i will also introduce three examples of costume work on control

the first two examples are based on pipelines familiar in game industry but i will go them through from costume perspective and present my contribution to the process the first example we'll look into is the development of the protagonist jesse's costume was based on live garments with the second example i will talk about how the costume construction solutions were communicated further in the production and how i supported the character artists work and finally i will present the live action pipeline which is basically the pipeline of life arts there is integrated live footage in remedy games and during my time in the company i did some traditional costume design by dressing up the actors for these live shoots i will use dr darling shoots as an example for this one these slides will be posted online later and you are welcome to look at details

at the website but for now i want to point out a couple of things from the following charts when i started working at remedy i had no idea how to make games my first challenge was to find out what is remedy's character pipeline by pipeline i addressed the collection of methods of the different sections of the process and the professionals who are involved with the visualization of the characters the sections are categorized on the left and on the right are the professionals responsible for those specific tasks the second challenge was how can i be involved i made this pipeline comparison to figure out the similarities and differences of the character pipeline of remedy and costume pipeline in live arts which i'm familiar with these processes are of either fields are not as linear and and defined as it might appear in these

charts but i simplified them for the research sake first of all what i found out was that the pre-productions of these two are very alike the pre-production start with analyzing the narrative whether it is a script or a character bio after the script analysis there are the stages of research reference material search and reference or mood boards all identical in both pipelines this all leads to visualizing the character in a costume illustration or concept the production phases on the other hand are very different the production of a game character was all new for me and i had to figure out how to how to contribute to this part of the process what was also new were the technical restrictions of character production that sets frames to what type of clothing i can design for the characters

also the iteration loops formed a major difference during control sometimes the costume passed through the production phase and after testing ended up all the way back to my desk for a redesign while in live arts the iteration rotates mostly between rehearsals and costume adjustments in the end i was involved with the entire character pipeline of control i worked as part of the character artist's team under the direction of the lead character artist antipormier in the pre-production i worked on the character analysis research reference boards and costume-based character concepts some new methods were integrated into the pipeline such as dress code and detail boards but i'll talk about these later on during production i search for both real and digital textile and clothing material for for the scan and reference purposes character photo suits was a method adapted from live arts i will get back

to that one too i manufacture clothing in my marvelous designer and offered costume support for character artists and character technical artists when needed and here is how i was involved this is a recap of some of my tasks at remedy it's a collect collection it's collected from my video diary one second per day and it has peaks to each of the examples we will go through doing the presentation [Music] what you might be [Music]

first [Applause] thank you [Applause]

[Music] before going through the examples let's have a look at the game in order to design the protagonist and the rest of the characters we need to be familiar with the setting of the game and the environment the characters will be seen in the story of control takes place in the oldest house which is the headquarters of the federal control the oldest house is located in new york and it's built in the brutalistic architectural style august 4th 1964 bureau agents discover the oldest house investigating an altered world event case in new york city subway tunnels it's a place of power from the outside

it looks like an ordinary building a brutalist skyscraper but inside it breaks the laws of our reality unstable mad shifting there are rooms in the building where other dimensions leak in we call these rooms thresholds [Music] there is a connection between our minds and the unknown often hostile forces intruding on our world these forces gravitate toward everyday objects a gun a television a house with a reputation of being haunted so somehow we affect these events we're holding the key but we don't have a clue on how to use it we're dealing with dangerous unknown forces here

what's the cause and what's the effect are we the starting point or just a necessary evil in this zachariah trench the director of the federal bureau of control as mentioned in the trailer the environment is an ever-shifting supernatural location that exists outside of the laws of reality the fbc has created a combination of science and virtualism in order to stabilize some of the oldest house topography the equipment of brewer is old-fashioned the supernatural environment demands

tested and confirmed equipment that is more stable than the modern ones changing the gear might risk the reached stability stability of the unpredictable environment in addition to studying supernatural elements that they actively seek out contain study and attempt to control within this interior fpc also researches various forms of protection from supernatural phenomena to shield the employees the people who work in this environment the employees of fbc are regular bro staff such as office workers maintenance and security i created the bureau's dress code to frame the style of these npcs in the game i kept the style classic timeless and generic to contrast to the unpredictable supernatural environment as the equipment of brawl also the

office dress code is old-fashioned and leans back to the 60s to 80s office wear that was based on straight pants and collared shirts and that some of his jobs still is most of control's costumes are based on these fundaments except for maintenance and tactically demanding costumes however fbc employees always dress up appropriately and treat their clothes with respect here are a couple of npc characters i made even the laboratory work is worker is based on a collared shirt and straight pants you might notice a quality differences between these concepts during the years in live arts i always threw everything by hand but when i started at remedy i had to learn how to use photoshop the lab guy is one of my earliest concepts then we get to the first example developing the protagonist

after i was familiar with the environment the characters will inhabit and created the dress code to define the base style of npc's look i created a reference board to explore jesse's style the my main idea here was to communicate jessie's externality to brew through style and materials jesse was contemporary relatable street clothes and her materials are denim and jersey she was the only teens in the building in contrast brewer clothes are made of durable and high quality materials and their style is old-fashioned and well-fitted chess is not into fashion what matters for her more is the functionality of the clothing when jessie arrives brawl she rebels against the dress code whatever she is given to wear she rolls up sleeves if possible or keeps items of her own outfit such as her jersey shirt or shoes her growth into the role of the director

is also expressed through her appearance during the pre-production of control i made around 130 costume variations of jessie's outfit jesse's character was developed alongside the narrative and during the process of defining our protagonist the style went from official style street style then a bit over the top to punk then to a soft casual look before jesse's current style started forming up actually the reference port of the previous light was not the first but probably the fifth of a kind and here it applies to the last two rows of costume variations when i found the style that the team agreed with i created this costume board for chessy's life concepts based on the board i bought actual clothes for costume fitting at this point we knew that when courtney

hope who acts jesse comes over we will dress her up as jessie and have a photo shoot with her in character the clothes i bought based on the board are used to build up live concepts to test jesse's outfit combinations i made around 30 of these i narrowed the selection of 30 down to five outfit combinations that were tested at the photo shoot on courtney there's me with the photographer mick corrigan and lead character artist anti bormio at the shoots looking through the live concept variations during the same photo shoot where we tested the costumes we took photos of courtney in character these in-character photos were further utilized in concept art based on the photoshoots costume tests i defined the final outfit on the left jesse went through some modifications

due to visual and technical reasons after the final concept here on the right right we have the final chassis when the concept was confirmed i moved on to manufacturing jesse's jacket which was highly handcrafted first i dyed the leather by hand here are the samples i was exploring the ties between green and blue then the jacket was made to courtney hope's measurements at the seamstress on the continent according to the costing concept after manufacturing the jacket was distressed and molded with steam and shoe polish to make it to make it appear more worn after the manufacture and distressing the jacket was photo scanned each pattern piece of the jacket was photographed to transfer the handcrafted details accurately to the digital version

since originally i had planned to give chessy a scarf i had kept the checks designed very simple but after giving up the scarf the jacket needed some post details detailing so i added a zipper when the jacket was ready we had another photo shoot with courtney this time it was for key art and motion reference material there is called doing the shield we have these character photo shoots for every main character of control this photo is from trenches photoshoots trench is played by james mccarthy i designed and had manufactured all the game's main costumes the costume supports the actor's work by helping the actor to internalize the character utilizing an actor for their character exploration and recording it in photoshoots and live videos brought the character alive and helped us to define the co-created idea of the appearance and the personality of the character

basing the character on live material gives it connections to reality what we got from the photo shoots were the photo motion and character references of the actual character in the costume which were further utilized by concept artists character technical artists and for the internal communication the costumes produced for the shoot where later photoscanned and here is how the jacket currently looks like in the game then we have the example number two design communication in production it's about how i communicated the costume information further to character artists in this example i will present one of

jesse's outfit variations i started with a reference board again and explored the style and materials of the outfit after iterations this concept was confirmed by the team i designed this outfit to emphasize the brutalistic architecture of the oldest house i thought of it as the building in a costume form after the concept i proceeded into detail board for character artists it is meant to give the character artists all the costume related information they need such as material volumes attachment details and the outfit layers here's another detail board example and another one of jesse's outfit options the difference to the previous one is that the concept here is not by me but by the le kin none one of my tasks was to define concept artists character concepts since the construction of the costumes where they

represented were not always exact i translated the concept into seams or layers of clothing and defined the attachments materials and other details of the outfit by paint over and for the reference i solved the questions of how to wear it and can the character move in it the costumes needed to be realistic and make sense also a narrative connection was created the costume needed a function after the detail boards i created the costumes in marvelous designer the program is perfect for design communication since it is based on actual clothes manufacture that i'm familiar with so to support character artists work i produce either live clothing photo scan or digital clothing in marvelous designer detail boards were made for the more complex costumes that were not manufactured in reality all the actually manufactured costumes function as detail references themselves

during production i sat at the character artist room and had a rack of clothes next to my desk so we could go through costume construction details with live clothing when necessary i also prepared textures by photographing and tiling textile materials and here is the final 3d model by daniel garcia then we have our last example the pipeline of live action [Music] i'm starting with this reference board again to emphasize that the starting point for each costume whether digital or real is always the same here is the exploration for dr darling based on his character bio darling's character pipeline followed the costume production of live arts i purposefully chose materials hard to render because we didn't have to care about the 3d model this time this

costume only appears in live footage at first i bought and put together the wardrobe of dr darling based on the reference board then i photographed each of the outfit variations and defined how is he wearing them and what does it tell of the character and the situation then i made the script analysis and seen breakdown and decided which outfit he will be wearing in each scene and how is he wearing it and then we had the shoots on the left sam is directing matthew perez who plays dr darling and on the right shots of how it looks in the game and that was my last example it's time to summarize i have shown three ways of how costume designer has contributed to the game development of control from developing a protagonist to helping

the production and finally live action shoots what comes to character's appearance people who design characters for games are doing the same thing as costume designers but digitally in control i got to do both i used live arts costume design practices and digital methods to develop realistic characters and support game developers work last year i started lecturing about digital costume in various costume study programs in finland and alta university has started integrating digital methods into the costume degree in addition to preparing costume designers to work on the digital characters in film and animation the aim is to provide future costume designer skills that allow them to offer costume support in game development and other digital productions so let's collaborate

thank you instead of taking the questions here i would like to continue the session in one of the wrap-up rooms and i actually have a request for you i'm looking to continue my research and since i only have experience from one company and one project i would love to hear examples from the industry like other examples who are the costume responsible people of your company and what is the role of costume in your character pipelines i'm aware of the collaboration collaborations between costume designers and gaming industry in la noire and gta 5 but i would love to hear more so if you would like to share any question related information please contact me through the email or join me to the wrap-up room just across the hall where i'll also answer the questions thank you [Applause]